


Half Past Adventure, Season 2: Becoming Heroes

by Pablo360



Series: Half Past Adventure with Macy and Robin [2]
Category: Adventure Time
Genre: (mostly), (read "My Confident Flowers" if you haven't already), (subtle but it's there), (who am I kidding that side story is more popular than the main fic by a long shot), 5-4-3-2-1 Relaxation Technique, Accounting, Actual Therapeutic Techniques, Antipsychotics, Archery, Astral Projection, At this point my guidelines for whether or not I'll tag a character elude even myself, Bad Puns, Blood and Injury, Broken Bones, Childhood Trauma, Childishness, Death of a Salesman, Discussion of Abstract Art, Discussion of General Relativity, Discussion of medical side effects, Doomsday Foreshadowing, Draconianism, Dragons, Duelling, Durian Juice, Eggs, Entomophobia, Existential Crisis, Fantasy Politics, Fear, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Giant Spiders, Gratuitous Lore Expansion, Gravecarver isn't an actual word but sue me, Hallucinations, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Historiography, Honor, Huntress Wizard also gets a lot of focus, I learned that one from Thomas Sanders, I still haven't tagged Slime Princess or LSP once despite both of them coming up repeatedly, Ill-Advised Therapy, Immersion Therapy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Time Travel, Implied/Referenced Water Beds, Incidental Music, Insecurity, Jealousy, Kidnapping, Like, Medication, Memory Alteration, Memory Magic, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mindfulness Meditation, Minor Character Death, Near-Apocalypse, Networking, Original Character Death(s), Original Character-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Political Rivalry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Publish or Perish, Puppy Hate, Questionable Underwater Physics, Reading, References to Yellow Submarine, Religion, Reunited (And it Feels So Bewildering), Science, Shopping, Skydiving, Slapstick, Spherical Frictionless Cows, Spiders, Story within a Story, Sunglasses, Surreal horror, Tardive Dyskinesia, Teasing, Thanks for the Crapabbles, The Night Sword, Vivid Hallucinations, Vriska reference, Written by a Former Archery Club Member, also I said HW would get a lot of focus but that can't really be true until this arc is done, bildungsroman, bowling, but Hunson Abadeer shows up in person for one scene and gets tagged, but I will once they interact in the present, discussion of religion, eldritch horror, how the hell is there a tag for beau but not abracadaniel or banana man, obviously, prosthetic eye, puns, relationship troubles, rudeness, since Marcy & PB didn't show up outside of a flashback I didn't tag their relationship, since they're “canonically” married in this timeline, snail mail, text speak, video calls, war preparations, which is like puppy love but for kismesissitude
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 124,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24613621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pablo360/pseuds/Pablo360
Summary: Ooo is a land of heroes.  Nearly one thousand and thirty-eight years after the devastating Mushroom War brought down empires and leveled nations, a new hero seeks to one day etch her name into the annals of history.  Macadamia the Nut, along with her rainicorn-dog friend Robin V., is a hero in training, apprenticing under Huntress Wizard to learn the ways of the wild and of how best to guard the delicate balance of the world.  She grew up on stories of heroes like Huntress Wizard and her boyfriend, Finn Mertens.  In time, she herself will inspire more heroes after her.  But this is not that story.  Not yet, at least.For now, this is the story of how Macy and Robin started to grow into the heroes they would one day become, and of how they saved the world for the second — and not final — time.
Relationships: Abracadaniel/Ice King | Simon Petrikov, Finn the Human/Huntress Wizard, Huntress Wizard/Wildberry Princess, Marquis of Nuts♠️Original Character
Series: Half Past Adventure with Macy and Robin [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1360765
Comments: 26
Kudos: 5





	1. Attracting Forces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Macy decides to break in the Nut Bow she got for her birthday by going on a trip with Robin and Huntress Wizard.
> 
> Chapter 19 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! I don't know why I said that; I didn't actually take a break between seasons. Which I guess means these aren't really seasons, but whatever, who cares.
> 
> It's time for another round of adventures with (what I can only assume is) everyone's favorite talking macadamia nut and nonbinary magic horse dog duo! I'll do my best to make it accessible for anyone who doesn't feel up to the task of reading [the first 222,690 (nice) words of their adventure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820774/chapters/44660608), because I'm nice like that. I've uploaded an [in-character recap](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24615967) as well, but that shouldn't be necessary. For the first few times around at least, I want to make each new season of the fic a reasonable jumping-on point for new readers.
> 
> Because only one person ever responded to the discussion prompts I did last season, I'll be putting them in the endnotes this time, right before the preview, and including my own answer, but I'll still have them in the pre-chapter notes as well. Speaking of which, here's that for this chapter: If you were a part of any clubs during middle or high school, what was your favorite and why?

Two figures stood in a hallway on the third floor of Castle Jugland, listening against a heavy pine door. One was a peanut whose face was in his bottom half, wearing a brown tracksuit with a green-tipped lance holstered at his side. He held the small end of a bowed metal cone against his ear slit to help direct the sound, though the device had gotten tangled in his knee-length black toupé such that it was half pulled off his head. The other was a rainicorn-dog with rubies for eyes and muted pastel stripes, who would be a meter and a half if zhe were standing upright; zhe wore no clothes other than zhir fur and a collection of colorful buttons braided into zhir fluffy tail. Zhe had morphed one of zhir ears so it was the relative size of a fennec fox’s.

“Hey, Robin,” whispered the peanut, “I can’t hear anything. Did she stop?”

“Nah,” Robin whispered back. “I think you just share her garbage nut hearing, Penhaligon.”

Pen grunted. “You could be messing with me.”

“If I were messing with you, you’d know, unless I didn’t want you to know, in which case you wouldn’t know. The point is, either way you wouldn’t be asking yourself that question.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” called a voice from the other side of the door. “You two are terrible at supper fugue.”

Robin pushed open the door. The bedroom on the other side was surprisingly tidy, considering the freshly-minted teenager who occupied it. The walls were painted green with a floral pattern, matched in the carpet, though the latter was brighter with splashes of reds and yellows. In one corner stood a bookshelf full to bursting with folk histories, mystery novels, borrowed poetry books, and several volumes of _A Collector’s Guide to Coinage_ by Lionel Rednose. On the far wall was a large tryptich window through which the forest of the Valley of Moths could be seen down below. Just below the window was a writing desk, cluttered with school assignments, diagrams of flowers, and torn-open envelopes; golden light from the window flowed over the desk, as well as the bed beside it. The large bed was made up neatly with pink pillows and a tartan topsheet. In the middle of the bed, a four foot macadamia nut sat cross-legged, plucking at the drawstring of an ornate, peanut-adorned compound bow like it was a musical instrument.

“‘Sup, hatebirds.” said Macadamia the Nut. “You here to offer musical critique?”

“What? No, I’m not that shallow anymore,” protested Robin. “Although if you’re attempting a _son clave,_ the timing in the _tresillo_ is a little off.”

“Also, we’re not hatebirds,” Pen insisted, though the way he looked off to the side so that his curtain of fake hair obscured his face suggested otherwise.

“I dunno about that one.” Robin nudged Pen with zhir elbow. “I mean, you married a birdologist, so you’ve probably got a little bird in you. You’ve got the patience of a mountain jay, after all.” Outside, a mountain jay loudly tweeted as if in protest.

Pen huffed. “And you’re awfully _flighty_ yourself.” In response, Robin’s horn glowed and zhir fur tone reddened, a technique zhe had accidentally taught zhirself in order to simulate blushing.

“Alright, that’s it.” Setting down the bow delicately, Macy hopped off the bed and started pushing the other nut with both hands. “Out, bro. If you’re gonna hateflirt with my best friend in my presence, at least have the dignity to not pun while doing so.”

“Aw,” he protested as she scooted him out of the room. “But I wanted to say goodbye one last time before you left.”

“I’ll only be gone for the weekend, and the whole family said goodbye last night.” With one last nudge, she set him in the hallway and slammed her bedroom door. Turning to Robin, she asked, “So, things are going strong between you and Pen, eh? How’s he holding up since… you know…”

Robin took in a sharp breath, and zhir color palette wholly desaturated. Ever since zhe had started learning magic, zhe’d started reflexively leeching the color from things when zhe tensed up, whether physically or emotionally. Not much put zhir more on edge over the last five weeks than thinking about the day of that birthday party, where Pen had gotten injured. Where the one family member who _hadn’t_ said goodbye last night had—

 _No! Not now, of all times!_ Zhe scrunched zhir face so hard in concentration that zhir large black jowls slapped wetly against each other. Zhe was here because of something _good_ that had happened at that party; zhe couldn’t suck the life from the room by dwelling on the bad. “He’s doing fine,” zhe replied, which was mostly true. “Dr. Minerva patched him right up. It’s like he never even fell off a parapet after rolling down from the highest point in not just the castle but the entire city of Jugland.”

Macy folded her arms in consternation. Clearly she wasn’t buying it. She kept her arms folded as she walked over to her closet, throwing open the door with her foot. “So you _didn’t_ spend the night in his bedroom, entering his dreams and warding off nightmares like you used to do for me before I started going to therapy, then.”

“That is correct,” Robin lied. Tourmaline, zhe hoped the makeup zhe’d borrowed from Macy’s other brother Galé (without his knowledge) was doing a better job of hiding the sleepless bags under zhir eyes than zhir unreliable chromatic magic usually did.

“If that’s the case,” Macy inquired as she threw on a thick pink sweater and an already-packed brown backpack, “why did you come in through my door instead of climbing up to the window, like you usually do?”

“Oh, that? Captain Mél asked me to stop that, so I did.” The first part was true. Following pressure from Princess Bubblegum via Ambassador Candice Corn, the captain of the Nut Guard had asked Robin to stop repeatedly broaching duchy security by sneaking into zhir friend’s bedroom from outside the castle at the break of dawn. The second part was a lie. Nobody told Robin V. what to do except Robin V., and occasionally Macy, and every once in a while one of zhir relatives from the future or through an astral projection. Other than that, nobody.

Macy must have known that, based on the incredulous look she was shooting zhir, but then she shrugged. “Whatever, that’s not my department.” She walked over to the bed and picked up the bow, wrapping it in a tartan blanket from her backpack before slinging it over her shoulder.

“You all packed?” asked Robin, slithering across the room and climbing onto the desk. As zhe pushed open the window, a breeze flowed in, carrying the smells of stale petrichor and ozone, as well as hints of wild primrose from the valley below.

“Not yet.”

Already stepping out, Robin had to twist her neck in a manner that zhe suspected would be painful for a non-shapeshifter (and impossible for a neckless creature like Macy) to see what she meant. Macy opened one of the drawers of her desk and pulled out a rather unusual necklace — a purple two-dollar coin with a characteristic pentagonal hole in the middle, strung through with a piece of pink ribbon which had once enclosed the very box her new Nut Bow had been in. She always referred to this as her lucky coin, though Robin had yet to see it do anything particularly lucky.

Robin glared at Macy, zhir body spooled down the cliffside to a ledge below, as the nut struggled to tie the necklace together behind her head. “Yo, Mace,” zhe barked, “you don’t need no fancy _accoutrements_ to take the Nut Bow for a test run. Let’s just go already.”

“Heh.” As Macy fumbled with the ribbon, she playfully returned Robin’s gaze. “Looking forward to getting out of the duchy, are you?”

The rainicorn-dog pouted. “Uh, I can leave any time I like, excuse you. I just… actually, I don’t know why I want to head out so badly,” zhe admitted. “Probably just nerves.”

“And not because you’re so socially dependent on me that if I don’t leave, you have no reason to?”

“No, of course not!” Zhe did zhir best impression of what zhe sounded like when zhe was offended. Zhir forepaws started straining from hanging out of the window for so long. “I’ve got other friends. Just last week I went out for a game night with Cash Daniels and Jeff Whedon. But I couldn’t, you know, just up and jaunt over to the Crystal Dimension while Hal was in the hospital.”

“Alright,” Macy admitted, “I was pretty worried for Pen too. Point taken. I can’t imagine how painful it must be when someone you’re that close to gets hurt.”

“Wait, what? He’s your brother!”

Macy shrugged. “Yeah, but he’s like my least favorite sibling. Galé’s funner, and Archie’s cooler.” She suddenly stopped, her fingers fumbling for the thread. She did not want to talk about Archie. She was playing up the aloofness she expected from her newly teenage self specifically to avoid talking about Archie. “That is to say, I was more relieved things didn’t turn out a lot worse than I was worried about what happened. My school therapist says that’s not an unusual reaction to have to trauma, but it’s still…” She stopped again. _Too far in the other direction._ “Pen’s tough. Not as tough as me, of course, but still. It’s his least attractive quality sometimes. I don’t get what you see in him.”

“Oh, Macy,” Robin sighed wistfully as zhe shapeshifted zhir paws into clamps before they could begin slipping in earnest. “One day, you’ll meet someone and it’ll change your entire world. Love or hate, you’ll want to spend every moment focused on them, right up until the new relationship energy wears off and you realize that would be incredibly creepy. It’s part of the teen experience.”

“That’s not true,” Macy protested. “Maybe it’ll turn out I’m aromantic.”

“I’ve walked in your dreams for years. You’re not. In fact, I think you’ve already—”

The necklace was suddenly already tied. “Okaythat’sgreatnowlet’sgetgoing! This sheer cliff face won’t scale itself!” Macy jumped over Robin, grabbed onto zhir like a fire pole, and slid down. Robin shut the window on zhir way out.

* * *

A short trek through the eerie, barren forest of the Valley of Moths later, Macy and Robin arrived at a clearing dominated by a small, frozen-over pond surrounded by rocks of varying sizes. On one particularly large boulder, a green-and-brown snake sat curled up, attempting to warm sirself with the feeble sunlight as the shadows of the mountain receded from the glade in what the locals called a “coward’s sunrise”. The light dusting from what sparse snow made it past the domineering peaks of the Sienna Ridge bore impressions from some of the animals that weren’t hibernating — badgers, small birds, the occasional adventurous mountain goat.

Macy sat down on the rock next to the snake. “Alright, I know it’s you.”

In an eighth of a second, the snake changed shape, growing taller and buffer until it took on the form of a leaf-haired, branch-horned goblin lady wearing a brown cloak with a pinecone clasp over a #1 Babes band t-shirt and scuffed khakis. “Perceptive as always, my pupil,” remarked Huntress Wizard with the half-lidded downward gaze of acknowledgement. “You truly do have the eyes of a huntress.”

“Not really,” Macy admitted. She picked up a dead branch and threw it into the forest for Robin to fetch. “It’s just that the snake who normally uses that rock is blue and yellow. Sie says hi, by the way.” All snakes use sie/sir pronouns. Everyone knows that. “Also, snakes hibernate around here.”

“Well, it’s good to hear that you’re well-acquainted with the denizens of the forest, since protecting them is the job of a pro-body. I hope that you’ve been keeping up your vigilance since when I saw you at your birthday party.”

“Oh, I have been!” Macy beamed. “In fact, I now know the hibernation spots of all the animals in the forest and what their foraging locations are most likely gonna be when they wake up.”

“Stop. That’s creepy and obsessive. I meant, like, do some kinda look-see about how’s the forest handling the frost and whatnot. Don’t make it weird.”

“Hm.” Macy crossed her arms, disgruntled, as Robin ran up to her with the stick in zhir forepaws. Macy refused to uncross her arms to grab the stick, instead taking it from the rainicorn-dog with her feet and tossing it a meager one and a half meters. Robin didn’t bother chasing it. Macy rolled onto her back. “Judgy tranch.”

“Young lady!” HW snapped. “You watch your mouth.”

“You can’t tell me what to— oh, wait, you’re my master, you can totally tell me what to do.” Macy sat up and smiled apologetically at the huntress. “Dang my teenage impulses. I just can’t control ‘em.”

“Yes, you can,” Huntress Wizard and Robin said in unison.

Macy shivered. “It’s cold out. Are we gonna sit around all day talking about nothing, or shall we actually do what we came out here to do?”

Robin raised a paw, but before zhe could say anything, HW cut her off. “We’re doing the doing-the-thing thing,” she declared. “But these woods aren’t good hunting grounds. Why don’t we do it at my place? I don’t think I’ve shown you the new digs yet.”

“New digs?” asked Macy, standing up and skilting (a thing neckless beings do where they bend one knee to indicate the head-tilt of confusion).

“The new digs are the old digs,” Robin explained. Zhir horn lit up, and a mirage of a homely treehouse familiar to Macy appeared around the group. The image brought back the associated smell of drying meat, which Macy was not a fan of. “We met her at a temporary construction she’d set up to keep an eye on the Evil Forest, but her actual address where you’ve been sending letters to this whole time is in another, unrelated forest.” Robin dismissed the magical hologram, then pawed at zhir horn. “Aw, dang, it always overheats when I do that. You know, you’d think that’d be comfortable in this cold weather, but it’s really not.”

“I get the same way. Now, gather round.”

At the huntress’s word, Robin wrapped zhir full seven meter length in a large circle around the rock while Macy turned to face her mentor directly. Huntress Wizard crossed her arms in front of her face, palms open, and then made circles with her index fingers and thumbs; a yellow glow emanated from her body, diffusing through the air like turmeric-scented mist. Robin crinkled her nose.

“We’re going to take the most direct path to my place,” HW explained, her eyes closed, as the winds picked up around them in a vortex that swirled the white dusting on the ground up into a cloud. “Spirits of being, spirits of binding, spirits of magic. I ask nothing in return for my humble service, but I nevertheless ask for yours. Bind us together, soul for soul, that my word might reach across the world where I see with other eyes.” Speaking of eyes, she opened hers, glowing green like a hailstorm, and shouted, _“Razzamafoo!”_

For a beat of the cosmic symphony that permeates reality, the clearing was deathly still. They were gone, as was the vortex that had surrounded them, and the rocks surrounding the frozen pond looked like they hadn’t been snowed on at all. The forest was even quieter than before, as if in awe.

Then an eighth-grade pinto bean with a leather bike jacket kicked a pair of wolf-people in Icy University letter jackets into the glade, knocking them onto their faces. “Alright, ya hooligans, it’s time ya learn real candid who holds the power in Jugland, jazzy? First rule’s ain’t no rules but Jordathan’s.”

* * *

Hundreds of miles away, in a cave at an undisclosed location in the Desert of Wonder, a warden watched over two prisoners. These prisoners were yellow-furred chihuahuas, identical in every way except for their eyes — one had brown, the other blue — but although they had on the same prison smocks poorly sewn from orange fabric by a warden who didn’t know how to sew, they held themselves completely differently in their adjacent cells. The blue-eyed one, Joëlle by her stitched-on nametag, kept hers fastidiously neat, sitting in the middle of the room rather than on her bed or against a wall so as not to ruffle it unnecessarily. The brown-eyed one, on the other paw, was sitting ominously on her cot and had torn up her uniform somewhat, removing the nametag and turning one sleeve into an armband.

Her desecration won’t stop me from telling you her name. It’s Noëlle.

“Vell, _monsieur_ Jaques ze Doppelganger,” jeered Joëlle. “Do jou intend to engage in anozer round of fruitless interrogation viz _me et ma sœur?_ Or ‘ave zou finally realized zat it iz a fruitless task?”

“I don’t know who ‘Mama Sour’ is,” protested Jake, who was blue for some reason. He spun a ring of two keys lazily on his finger. “But I’ve had you guys captured for almost a hundred days now, so I don’t know what makes you think I’d suddenly give up on getting you to spill the delicious metaphorical beans on what your whole deal was.”

“Our whole deal?” Joëlle cocked her head to the side, genuinely confused.

“Oh, you know, the whole thing you guys were up to with the diamond cartel and the anarchist cell? Hey, that rhymes. Maybe that could be a children’s book.” Jake looked off to the side where the cave exit was illuminated by the midmorning sun, distracted by his own idea.

“Zat sounds like a good idea,” agreed Joëlle, “but if ve are doing zis, I vant a cut of ze royalties. Let’s say—”

“Qviet!” barked Noëlle. “Zis mongrel vill not get anyzing out of us, lucrative book deal be damned. Jour boss may ‘ave given up on us, but I vill not betray my people in turn. I vill not be a green-knight. Do not give into materialism.”

“Aw,” Joëlle whined, “but jou used to love giving into materialism.”

“Zat is irrelevant. Jaques ze Doppelganger, if zat is jour real name—”

“It’s not,” said Jake.

“—continue jour feeble attempts at interrogation. I vill not bend.”

“If you insist.” Unlocking Noëlle’s cell door with one hand, he reached through the bars with the other and shapeshifted his hands into a set of handcuffs. “Let’s hope the ninety-ninth time’s the charm.”

* * *

Macy, Robin, and Huntress Wizard appeared on a gravel path on the border between a forest and the vast Grasslands that covered much of Ooo. The weather here was a lot warmer, and Macy could smell fresh grass and autumn flowers and other smells that had vanished from the Valley of Moths. The vortex still swirled around them for a moment, picking up tiny pieces of gravel and grass, but it fizzled out quickly, leaving only Robin’s mussed-up coat as evidence it had happened at all.

Macy fell over again. “Fleas and lice, HW!” she exclaimed, dusting off her backpack where it had ground against gravel. “Never do that again. That was terrifying.”

“I’ve gotta do that again to get back,” the huntress replied with the faintest hint of a smirk.

“Oh.” Standing up, Macy looked around. “We’re not at your house. Why did we go through all that hullabaloo if we weren’t going to pop up right at your house?”

“That particular spell works best if I target an area clear of any random extra junk. I wouldn’t want to be one meter off and clip everyone into a tree.”

“Oof, yeah,” Robin agreed, cringing as zhe slinkied zhirself into a pyramid. “Good call. Macy’s archery club has already got somebody who’s half-tree.”

“Robin!”

“Half-tree, huh?” mused Huntress Wizard as the three began walking down the forest path. “I wonder if I’ve met the tree.”

“Well, you’ve met the half. Bran Don. He was at my birthday party.”

“Right, that guy. Nice kid. His particular pattern of speechifying reminds me of a troublesome fox I used to know.”

“Regardless,” said Robin as zhe uncurled, rearing up and resting zhir elbows on Macy’s head, “I’m just glad little Macy’s making friends.”

“Excuse you?” laughed Macy. “You’re the one who always had trouble making friends, not me. Up until you started dating my eldest bro I was basically your sole point of connection to the rest of the world, outside of family gatherings.”

“Sounds like the pot calling the kettle whatever color pots and kettles are,” teased Robin, who had now fully shapeshifted into a sideways-facing propeller hat. “How many friends did _you_ have before you moved to Jugland, aside from me.”

“Well, uh, that is to say, I mean, hmph!” Macy stuffed her hands in her coat pockets. “I had Masse Yvoire. Sure, that’s just one, but that’s one more than you.”

“Oh, right, Masse. I forgot about that guy. Why wasn’t _he_ at your birthday party?”

“Uh, because he had run away from the orphanage and nobody knew where he was? Come on, Robin, I know you know this stuff.”

“Sorry, I just forget things sometimes when they have to do with people I don’t like. That boy was a bad influence on you, and I’m glad you got adopted first so you could focus more time on me, the _good influence.”_

“Robin, you encouraged _me_ to run away from home _after_ I got adopted, which is probably why Masse ended up doing it. You even specifically called yourself the irresponsible one at the time.”

Somehow, Robin-the-hat shrugged. “Hey, I never said I was perfect. But still, it’s been a while since you’ve seen Masse. I wonder if you’ve still got a crush on him.”

Macy tripped over her own foot, sending herself sprawling to the forest floor. Robin landed a few paces ahead and shifted back to zhir full size. As Huntress Wizard stooped over to pick Macadamia back up by the shoulders, the embarrassed nut tried in vain to hide her shocked expression behind her scrawny li’l arms.

Robin spat out some dirt. “Blech. I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

“What?” Macy shook her head volent, knocking the top of her shell so that dust fell out of her ear slits. “Robin, that’s ridiculous. Even if we assume that anything I may or may not have said and/or did and/or dreamed during that time had anything to do with what you’re suggesting, just because I allegedly once had the stray crush-like feeling toward him at some point or maybe a bunch of points over more than a decade of my life—”

“Breathe, pupil,” HW reminded Macy as she gasped for air.

“—doesn’t mean I still have those feelings now. Right, master?”

“Attracting forces come and go,” the huntress half-whispered, as if reciting a spell. “Keep moving.”

“See? She agrees with me.”

“No, I mean literally keep moving.” She grabbed Macy’s hand and resumed walking. “Razz is very punctual about teatime.”

“Well, that first part was still agreement,” Macy said as she let herself be dragged forward. “I think.”

Robin chortled, waiting for Macy to catch up before zhe began walking. “De- _ni_ -al!” zhe proclaimed in a singsong voice.

Macy tugged at the collar of her coat, which was now feeling unseasonably warm, both due to embarrassment and the fact that she was suddenly in a different climate. “Plus,” she admitted, “I’ve already got a crush on someone else.”

“Ooh, do tell me—”

“It’s Princess Torte,” Macy said in a deadpan. “Robin, you _know_ it’s Princess Torte. You’ve seen how many times my dreams and nightmares replay that anxiety attack in the chocolate aviary. Don’t patronize me.”

“The huntress that chases two rabbits can catch both rabbits if she’s good at rabbit-catching.” Huntress Wizard cleared her throat. “What I mean is, those kinds of feelings aren’t mutually exclusive, and if you can’t act on both, repressing one of them is still a worse strategy than acknowledging them.”

“I’m not in denial,” insisted Macy, unzipping her coat to let the faint forest breeze in. “My feelings toward Masse are already complicated enough without casting them in a romantic light. I’m only barely a teenager, so let me take this one step at a time. Still,” she added, “at least he didn’t turn evil or something stupid like that.”

* * *

We interrupt this narration to bring you a special Announcement. At that very moment, simultaneously to Macy’s feelings jam and Noëlle’s interrogation, Masse “Seyv” Yvoire was doing something that conveniently proved he had, in fact, turned evil. As they say in the twenty-first century: Get dunked on, Macy.

Seyv was standing atop the prow of a yacht, fencing three dolphins at once with a gold-bladed gladius. In a single swipe, he disarmed one dolphin and cut the skull-and-crossbones eyepatch off another, causing the two to flop uselessly to the deck like some manner of beached aquatic mammal. The third stared at the chocolate chip, sweating, but held their ground, until Seyv lunged forward and sucker-punched them over the edge of the ship and into the rough waves below, which slammed them against the hull.

Seyv winced. They were probably fine, right? He was sure they were fine.

At the other end of the ship, his own master, a grey-skinned humanoid with green eyes and striped horns, dangled a boar over the side of the ship by his peg leg. The boar’s deep blue cloak flapped in the winds of the approaching storm, and his wide eyes conveyed all the terror his hoarse voice could not. “Please, Bandit Princess,” he choked out, “we had a deal. You were already getting more than your fair share of the plunder. Don’t do this.”

“Too bad, Danny-boy.” Bandit Princess released him and walked away from the edge of the ship. She didn’t watch him fall, and she didn’t listen to him scream as he did so. She merely stook a deep sniff, smelling the mixture of salt spray and blood. Today was a good day.

And now back to your regularly-scheduled Witness.

* * *

Go to hell.

In response to Macy’s comment, Robin’s horn glowed as zhe conjured an illusory collar to tug. Zhe recognized that as the veiled reference to Archie that it was. It was Archie who had gotten into that rooftop tussle with Pen that put him in the hospital for weeks. From what Pen had said, she had revealed herself to be a member of an anarchist organization with a branch in the Crystal Dimension, which had coordinated with a crystal cartel to attack Castle Jugland on Macy’s birthday. Robin, being one of the primary targets of the attack, shared Macy’s reluctance to talk directly about it.

Unfortunately, zhe knew a conversation needed to happen eventually. After all, Pen was not the only person who had been in the hospital after those attacks. Thanks to Huntress Wizard, they had managed to bag a dachshund named Gasket whom other captured mooks had identified as the leader of the cartel, the Rhodonite Ruffians. Following intense interrogation, Captain Mél and her second-in-command Lieutenant Peter Stachio had managed to get a lot of information about the structure and dysfunction of the collaboration from Gasket, including info pertaining to Archie. If the dachshund’s accusations were to be believed, Macy’s only sister had fought against that plan, and in fact may have set the Ruffians up for failure in exchange for the anarchists’ true goal, which was simply to worsen relations with the Candy Kingdom. It wasn’t exactly exoneration, but it was a nuance Macy needed to learn at some point, and it wasn’t one Robin was excited to teach.

“Hey, now,” cautioned Huntress Wizard, “let’s not be hasty. Lots of very nice people have turned evil. Some of my best friends are evil!”

Macy stopped walking for a moment and skilted, a bemused expression on her face. “What friend of yours is evil?”

“My old magic tutor, Forest Wizard. You’ve met him. Robin, you body-checked him for me.”

“Oh yeah, I did,” Robin mused. “That was the day I met Ja—” Zhe cut herself off, zhir horn instantly sucking the color from zhir body. Zhe was not supposed to say that zhe met Jake from the future, for vague paradox-related reasons zhe didn’t understand but took on faith.

“The day you met what?” asked HW.

“The day I met ja grass dragon and helped Macy kill it,” zhe replied, smiling nervously and forcing zhirself to turn back into zhir normal colors. Zhe got the order wrong. “Let’s talk about that.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that,” Macy agreed, pulling out her bow. She enjoyed discussing her victories.

“Yes, let us talk about that, shall we?” came a voice from all around them.

They looked every which way as another vortex blew around them. This one spiraled clockwise inward, which the experienced huntress instantly recognized as wrong for this half of the world. As they glanced around, they couldn’t pinpoint the source of the voice, for every plant nearby was moving, every bird twittering in alarm, every insect on the ground scurrying for cover. The smell was indescribable, but if they had to describe it, they would have compared it to peat moss and cinnamon.

Then the vortex stopped, and there was a green, snowman-shaped figure standing before them, with long caramel hair and a green headband with two earlike leaves sticking out of the sides. He seemed not to stand on the forest floor, but rather to exist at a point in space which happened to coincide with the area his image appeared. In one hand he held a miniaturized version of the reversed vortex, which turned into one of his fingers. His other hand was on his hip in a scolding gesture.

Huntress Wizard gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “Oh, right, I forgot about this clown. Macadamia, Robin, meet the spirit of this forest. He’s here to tell me what I did wrong.”

* * *

“I’m not here to tell you what you did wrong,” said Jake from the future, who had shapeshifted his jowls into a mustache. “You already know that. I’m here to tell you—”

“Blah blah blah.” Noëlle made a yapping gesture with her still-handcuffed paw. “Jou’ve started viz zat vun tventy-six times already. Get some better material.”

“Watch yer mouth, crook!” Jake ballooned his forehead and lunged forward, knocking over Noëlle’s rickety wooden chair and pinning her against the ground with his brow. “You ain’t nothing in here. I aim to get answers, and so I’ll get ‘em, _capisce?”_

 _“C-c-capisco,”_ stammered a nervous Noëlle. She hadn’t seen Jake quite so animated before. Still, when he retracted his forehead so she could prop her chair back up, the fright wore off. “My answers von’t be different, zough.”

“Well, maybe I’ll have some different questions, then. But first off, I think you should read this.” He sprouted an extra arm from the top of his head, slinking it under the heavy metal door and into the main chamber of the cave. When it came back, it was holding a rolled-up newspaper which he set on the table before his prisoner. “Last week’s issue of the _Sienna Times,”_ he explained. “I think you’ll find the page three story particularly interesting.”

“Hmf.” She opened the newspaper and scanned the page. “Boss Gasket’s been caught and convicted, eh? Vell, it serves her right. Whosever idea it vas to invade Castle Jugland after ze debacle zat got me and my sister captured should be fired from ze cannons of Fort Eisenkiesel. I vonder who’s going to replace Gasket.” She set the newspaper down.

Jake picked up the newspaper with his extra hand, balled it up, and bapped Joëlle on the nose with it, making her whimper in shame. “That’s not the point and you know it,” he growled. “She’s very openly denounced your little anarchist cell’s relationship with the Rhodonite Ruffians, and the way she worded it, the same’s probably true of the rest of her cartel. All your former allies are just gonna be scapegoats. Your silence is protecting a partnership that in all likelihood no longer exists. It’s in your best interest if you help me figure out what’s going on with the Ruffians so I can get to them before they tear your small-fry gang apart.”

Noëlle leaned back in her chair, tugging on her Jake handcuffs. “Vat do jou vant to know?”

Jake slammed his extra fist on the table, crumpling the newspaper. “What was your collaboration planning? What did they know about the Crystal Mergence, and when did they know it? And who in the organization might be willing to betray them?”

The chihuahua glanced from side to side as if searching for hidden cameras; she sniffed the air, probing for unexpected scents. “You really wanna know?”

“Yes, dammit!”

“Then lean in.”

Jake did so, magnifying his ear and pressing it assertively into Noëlle’s face.

Noëlle blew into his ear.

As Jake recoiled, retracting the arm he’d used to handcuff Noëlle, the chihuahua doubled over laughing. However many desserts her jailor would deprive her of in retaliation for that stunt, it was unquestionably worth it.

* * *

“Let’s go,” said Huntress Wizard, urging her companions onward despite the stranger who had suddenly appeared in their midst. “It’s not worth it. This guy’s been on my case like lice since I moved back in.”

Robin recoiled in disgust. “You have lice‽”

“It’s a figure of speech, probably,” Macy assured zhir, raising a hand diplomatically. “Also, hello, spirit of the forest. My name is Nakadamia the Mutt, apprentice of Wuntress Hizard. I’m sure that whatever my master has done to upfront you—”

“Oh, you’re part of this too,” the spirit warned, “but you’re still an apprentice. The one who trains you takes on your responsibility.”

“Responsibility for what?” Macy felt HW tug on her arm, so she began begrudgingly ambling along, still keeping her focus on the spirit. “Oh, we’re walking, and talking, I guess.”

The huntress huffed. “Responsibility for doing my job in a way he doesn’t approve, as if my _ex_ -mentor has any business judging how I go about my… business.”

Robin’s ears twitched curiously as zhe scampered around to Huntress Wizard’s side. “An ex, huh? Yeah, I can definitely pick up on that bitter divorcee vibe from the both a’ y’all.”

“No, an ex-mentor.”

“Tut-tut-tut,” Robin tutted. “You already told me that Forest Wizard was your ex-mentor. Clearly there’s something else apaw here.”

“A person can have two mentors, Robin.”

“Sounds fake.”

“Oh, it’s very real,” the spirit assured. “As real as the grass dragon you thoughtlessly slew.”

“You mean the dragon that was an invasive species?” growled HW, hunching her back so that her tree-antlers stood straight up. “The dragon whose presence was wreaking untold ecological havoc, until I went there and started doing some telling?”

“Hey,” said Macy, “now that you mention it, I’ve been wondering since then how much of it was the dragon and how much was FW.”

“Not helping, Macy.”

“Oh, I disagree.” The spirit held out its questionably material hand, and a buzzard flew down from above and lighted upon it. Well, that answered the question about its materiality, at least. “That was exactly the fundamental problem with your actions that day. Your apprentice is right to question it.”

“Oh, well, hehe.” Macy fondled her lucky coin. She could feel herself blushing from the praise. “I wouldn’t say I was questioning it exactly, moreso just thinking about a metaphor I’d made. If we’re like antibodies—”

“Pro-bodies,” the huntress interjected.

“—words is words. Anywhomst, if we’re like those, then does that mean the dragon was like the disease, or whatever, or was it the symptom and the disease was whatever weird cruft was going on with that other wizard guy I wasn’t there for. I think I remember someone saying something about a portal? It’s mostly semantics, since between me and my master we took care of both.”

“It’s not semantics, it’s your _job.”_

At this, Huntress Wizard froze in her tracks, fists clenched. She wheeled around on the interloping spirit with such palpable rage that Robin was almost physically repulsed. “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” she snapped, taking one hostile step toward him, then another. He remained unaffected. “Not when you haven’t done zilch to help me with it since you finished teaching me how to do it. I made the call I needed to make, and I pursued my quarry efficiently and without qualm, but all of that was in service to my greater mission of preservation.”

“Preservation of the forest.” The spirit’s tone was unchanged. “The dragon was as much a part of the forest as the cool cats or mongeese. It, too, was agitated by your other teacher. You still see your mission through narrow scopes.” He put his hands up to his eyes like binoculars to demonstrate.

“No. Don’t you dare imply that I should have placed a dragon before the ecosystem. You taught me better than that.”

“Was it not you who always said that a huntress who chases two rabbits can catch both?”

A beat.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” said Macy, hooking an aghast HW by the elbow and dragging her away. “We’d best meet up with Razz sooner rather than later. Don’t want to be late for tea.”

“Of course not. Tea is nature’s sports beverage.” The genuine, jovial lilt with which he spoke unnerved Macy, as if that line had not been preceded by the prior admonishments, but she didn’t let it show. She banished that thought, turned around to address him once more, and he was already gone.

“Huh.” Robin slithered to the back of the group and started pushing the still-rigid huntress from behind. “Well, that was fun. I have to say, I kinda like that guy’s style.”

Macy scoffed. “You would, wouldn’t you. Now move it, HW; I wasn’t kidding about the tea.”

* * *

“He wasn’t kidding about the tea,” Huntress Wizard admitted begrudgingly as she sipped from a fine china cup while wrapped in a woven wool blanket that was patterned with images of buffalo. “I think I’m starting to recover from… whatever that was.”

“Well, I should hope so, Hunnybuns.”

A raspberry about Macy’s size (though from the sound of her voice older than even her eldest brother), wearing what could only be described as a cross between a dress and a toga, gave HW an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Razz Wildberry was one of two people in all of Ooo who could truthfully call the huntress their girlfriend, but she didn’t seem to match. Although she was a berry and her lover a goblin, it was Huntress Wizard who seemed plucked straight from nature, from the wild mop of foliage that passed as hair to the rough-hewn leather boots adorning her feet which resembled plant pots. Razz, on the other hand, was clean, simple, and poised. Here in the flickering incandescent of the pair’s cozy cabin in the woods, reflecting off movie posters and knickknack cabinets, she seemed domestic — moreso than anyone or anything Macy had experienced before, as if she were drawn from one of the old sitcoms she used to watch at the orphanage rather than real life. She was a far cry from the boisterous apothecary she’d met in the Evil Forest, aside from the fact that she’d made tea.

“I’ve gotta admit, these are some nice digs,” said Robin, downing zhir fourth cup of ginseng as zhe poked at a glass cabinet full of small wooden sculptures. “A lot better than that hovel of a treehouse.”

“And here I thought you’d liked the treehouse.” Razz sounded genuinely disappointed.

“Oh, I did, it’s just like objectively a hovel.”

Macy skilted. “What’s a hovel?”

“So you’re looking for someone hovel explain it to you?”

“Shut up!” Macy playfully punched Robin, who collided into the cabinet horn-first. The whole cupboard rattled, and spiderweb cracks arced across its face. As soon as she saw this, Macy hid her hands in her coat pockets and began to whistle the tune to a song Robin had taught her, as if by doing so it would appear that she had played no part in this event.

Huntress Wizard took in a sharp, ragged breath, inhaling some hot tea and wincing in pain as a result, but by some miracle the cabinet did not break. “Thank the Globs,” she muttered.

Razz merely laughed it off, though her voice sounded at once conciliatory and insincere. “Whoopsie doodle! Haha, don’t you worry about a thing. That old cabinet’s seen worse days than this. Once you’ve left, we can make a clean break, and then a good sanding and a spot of epoxy glue should do the trick. I’ll just go into the other room to place a hold at the Home Improvement Kingdom, eh?”

When the berry left the room, for a few moments there was silence. Macy refused to look at the cabinet, so instead she immersed herself in her tea., although most of it was now staining the inside of her now uncomfortably warm and wet coat which she for some reason was still wearing. “You know,” she said for no other reason than to break the silence, “back at the orphanage, this kid named Fireball once broke the stairway railing so hard the entire thing snapped off like a twig, and Princeso had to—”

“They’re mine.” The words obviously came from HW — it was her voice, and her lips moved — but they seemed to come from elsewhere, too. A faint glow emanated from her woolen cocoon, and Macy and Robin could identify the smell of nightshade.

“Wuzzat?” asked Robin, zhir nose twitching.

“They’re mine,” the huntress repeated, sounding more normal. The aura was gone, but the scent lingered. “The statues in that cabinet, I mean. I made them.”

“Huh.” Robin backed away from the cabinet and scanned the display with her horn. “I have to say, nice work. I’m picking up on some very fine detail.”

“Thank you. I had seen you admiring them and was waiting for you to comment so I could tell you I made them. I guess this’ll do instead.” She made a wheezing sound that was probably supposed to be a sardonic chuckle.

“Yeah,” Macy noted with a smirk, “waiting for Robin to talk about something that’s right in front of zhir face is like waiting for Party Pat to stop partying. It just doesn’t happen unless something’s gone wrong.” If there weren’t so many other examples from their history, Robin would have been afraid Macy might know zhe was holding something back about Archie.

“You need to direct your strength,” said Huntress Wizard. The non-sequitur was so abrupt that Macy’s head hurt, but she didn’t get a chance to continue, for HW kept speaking. “I mean, that’s what you came out here to do, right? You want to practice bowmanship in an environment where you can let loose, with someone skilled to guide you. Thus, you come here, so I can show you how best to direct yourself.”

“Heh, I get it.” Macy tapped the bow on her back. “Direction, like aiming, ‘cause I’mma be an archer now.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I just meant because you want to expend your violent energy in a place governed by the rule of nature instead of the rule of civilization.”

“That’s stupid. I like my thing better.”

The huntress exchanged a glance and a grimace with Robin, and they both shook their respective heads (which is much better than if they had shaken each _others’_ heads). “Teenagers,” they said simultaneously.

“But for reals,” Robin added, “Macy’s thing was way better.”

* * *

_I just need the direction._ Jake the inexplicably blue dog sat alone in the empty interrogation room as its jury-rigged fluorescent light hummed. He had just dismissed Noëlle after yet another uneventful interrogation session, and he wanted to gather his thoughts before bringing Joëlle in. _If I could figure out the general direction of the Ruffians’ plans, that would be enough._

The trouble was, there weren’t that many thoughts to gather. Aside from what was in the newspaper a kindly desert eagle had dropped off at his cave entrance five days after it was published, he didn’t have anything to work with which he hadn’t had the last 98 times he’d tried this. He wasn’t even sure what he was searching for; all he knew was that, in the interest of not causing some kinda time paradox, he was best off not doing anything _besides_ searching for whatever, at least until the egg he’d collected from the grass dragon got nearer to hatching. Jake prided himself on not having screwed up so badly he endangered the fabric of the universe recently, and he didn’t want to lose that streak.

He morphed his bottom half into a second Jake sitting across from him to act as a sounding board. This strategy rarely actually helped him, but it was fun, so he did it anyway. “I need a new angle, other me,” he said. “I’m just not sure what else I can try that I haven’t already.”

The other him donned a high-collared uniform and a beret. “Grod dammit, detective!” he shouted, slamming his oversized fists on the table. “I don’t pay you to mope around, I pay you because you’re a loose cannon who gets results. If you want a job where someone holds your hands and guides you through it, go back to clown college and finish up your degree.”

“Are you crazy?” replied Jake, eyes widening like some sort of cartoon character. “I can’t go back to clown college. It never felt like I was being taken seriously, and the professors always laughed at me. It’s a miracle I could get any decent marks.”

“The only miracle is that I haven’t fired you!” barked the other Jake, fake eyes blinking unnaturally slow. “Use that big brain of yours and figure something out. Work with what you’ve got, not around the guidance you wish you had.”

“What I got is a secondhand report about the capture of a mob boss and her subsequent temper tantrum. Nothing there actually points toward an overarching motive.”

“That’s because you can’t see the big picture, Jay T.” The other Jake snapped his fingers, and the first Jake receded into him. With a schlorp, his facial features reappeared, now on the opposite side of the table from when he started. “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

* * *

“At least do _something.”_

Sitting bow-legged on the roof of Huntress Wizard and Razz’s log cabin, zhir fur partially desaturated, zhir eyes closed, Robin gave no outward acknowledgement of this admonishment other than the slightest twitch of zhir large black jowls. In fact, nobody else acknowledged it, either, for nobody else knew that admonishment had taken place. The white-gowned, blond-haired rainicorn-dog who gave it was only present on the spirit plane.

“I am doing something, Charlie. I’m meditating.” Robin’s projected psyche, in more vivid color than was possible while embodied, sat next to zhirself on the roof; Charlie sat facing zhir, playing a game of klondike solitaire. Robin watched the game with mild disinterest, never having put in the time to understand the rules. “For the first time in a while, too. It’s hard to concentrate in the city. I don’t think the nuts realize how noisy it is, even at nighttime.”

Charlie moved some cards around and seemed pleased with the result. “I didn’t cast my consciousness hundreds of miles from my comatose body to help you practice the mystical art of meditation.”

“No, you did it because you’re desperate for someone to talk to.”

A grotesque, baby-like spirit creature with skeletal butterfly wings drifted too close for comfort, so Charlie decked it in the schnoz to establish superiority. “Don’t you think you’re projecting a little with that assessment?”

Robin glanced at zhir own body, then back at Charlie, then raised an eyebrow. “Well, I sure hope I am, otherwise this scenario raises a lot of questions.”

“Har freaking har.” Charlie placed several cards from one part of the jumble before her to another, more organized part, which Robin was _pretty_ sure was the goal of the game. “If you’re not gonna work on your aura control, at least give me the news I’ve missed since the last time we talked. But don’t bother with the events of Macy’s birthday party. Viola already filled me in, though she still doesn’t know I can hear her.”

“You realize you could have me or Bronwyn tell her, right?”

“Nah, this way’s more fun. There’s no way my sister would tell me half the stuff she does if she knew I was actually listening now.”

“Right, well, as I mentioned, Macy’s come out here to break in her new Nut Bow that I guess her dad got made for her. She an’ HW are out making some targets right now. The old goblin’s in a bit of a funk because some forest spirit, whom she may or may not have dated (I’m not sure about that part), has been mad at her for a while about what we did in the Evil Forest, and he really rode her rump about it this morning.” Zhe did not mention the broken cabinet. What cabinet?

“Yeah, I guess burning the dragon alive was a pretty brutal way for y’all to go about it, but as someone who once had her father give up his bones for a fortune-telling spell, I’ve got, like, zero room to judge. That Macy’s a bright kid.”

“That she is,” Robin agreed. “Thing is, I don’t think that’s what the spirit was mad about. He seemed angry at Huntress Wizard for putting Macy in a position to fight the dragon at all. Something about how the dragon was a victim as well. It sounds like a cauldron of slag to me, ‘cause I don’t think any course of action would have resulted in us havin’ a friendly chat with the Mean Green Acid-Spitting Machine.”

“Hm.” A three-bodied monkey spirit leapt on Charlie’s game of solitaire and scattered it, so she dismissed the cards with a snap of her claws. “Did he say anything specific that you can recall? Any terms that jumped out at you as important?”

“I’m not really good at judging what’s important, but…” Robin scratched zhir real-world chin in contemplation. Zhe zhirself wasn’t sure if this gesture was ironic or genuine. “He used the phrase ‘preservation of the forest’, which reminded me of the whole ‘rule of the forest’ thing Macy an’ HW have got.”

“It sounds to me like the underlying objection is one of motive, not method. You have to keep in mind that spirits view the world differently than mortals. To a nature spirit, the abstract ideal of natural harmony is more substantial than any individual creature, or even any individual species. Someone acting with the pure intention of maintaining harmony would act to remove the disruptor — in your case, Forest Wizard — and then whatever the dragon ravaged would be part of the natural order. He sees a direct attack on a corrupted element of nature as vengeance, which to the immortal is not a cousin to justice but its opposite.”

“Wait, so he thinks Huntress Wizard is vindictive?” A golden owlbat swooped down and landed on Robin’s corporeal head. Concentrating, zhe emitted a pulse of the most jubilant color zhe could imagine from zhir phantasmal horn, and the same color leaked out of zhir real horn. Spooked by positivity, the bad omen of a creature flew away screeching. “That’s stupid.”

“The spirits, though wise, are often stupid.”

Robin cast zhir ruby eyes to the hideous menagerie of colorful sprites and specters that surrounded them. “Uh, not to be a vibeharsh, but is it really such a braniac move to announce that within earshot of these bozos?”

Charlie smirked. “Nah, but don’t fret about it. I’ve messed with forces _way_ beyonder my ken, and I turned out fine.”

“You’re trapped in a coma as a result of a backfiring spell and can only interact with the outside world through astral projection.”

“Exactly. I’ve got nothing to lose.” She got up, her legs passing through the roof of the cabin. “If that’s all, I’m gonna split before Huntress Wizard gets back here and spots me with her huntress eyes. That’d be awkward. Besides, I’ve got other places to be.”

“What other places could you possibly have?”

“Let a sorceress keep some of her secrets, m’kay?” And then, with a snap of her fingers, she was gone, and Robin started awake.

The color had just returned to zhir fur when zhe smelled Macy and HW about to approach, so zhe schlorped down to the ground before the huntress got the chance to ask zhir what zhe had been doing on her roof. Amid the rustling of leaves caressed by a gentle afternoon breeze, zhe could make out the tail end of a conversation between master and apprentice.

“—hurt myself, even?” Macy was saying, her voice strained as if zhe were carrying something hefty. “I’m a macadamia nut. We’re a famously tough genus.”

“I’m not going to underestimate the capacity of a child to find a way to hurt herself,” replied Huntress Wizard. Her voice wasn’t strained, but from the smell of it, she was expending some amount of magical energy. “Tough genus or no, your skinny lil’ arms and legs could get injured by a ricocheting arrow or a spooked animal, and unlikely as it is, I want medical supplies to be as close at hand as possible.”

“Ugh, you sound like my dad.” Macy stepped into Robin’s view with a delightfully annoyed expression, dragging behind her a sloppily-carved wooden archery target tied together with dried grasses. She stopped rolling her eyes long enough to glance at the puddle of rainicorn-dog on the forest floor. She drew to a stop as HW pulled up behind her, levitating a larger (if much better-made) target over her head in a glow of yellow-green aura, “Oh, hi, Robin,” she said. “Miss me while I was gone?”

“Yeah, but my aim’s gettin’ better.” Zhe shot Macy a finger gun and a wink, as well as an actual shot of rainbow energy from zhir horn for added effect.

Macy dropped her target as she fell to the ground, literally blue in the face from Robin’s attack. “Eyy,” she said, punctuated by the thwump of the target landing on its back.

“Eyy,” replied Robin.

The huntress shrugged before picking up Macy’s target and throwing it over her shoulder. “Eh.”

* * *

Macy had asked that Robin and Huntress Wizard not watch her as she practiced. Obviously, HW declined this request, since it would defeat the whole purpose of coming out here. Macy would just have to press on through her performance anxiety. At least Robin and Razz were back at the cabin preparing a big feast for dinner. For now, it was just the nut marquess and her goblin master in the small clearing. Macy found herself in a lot of clearings these days.

One target was fifteen meters away and the other was twenty-five, such that from where Macy stood, they appeared to be the same size. Next to Macy was a receptacle of arrows, since she hadn’t made her own quiver yet. HW stood behind her, giving her advice on how best to nock her arrow, how to steady her breathing, how best to judge the effect of gravity. Macy didn’t necessarily need the advice, being already the champion of the school archery club, but she nevertheless felt grateful to hear it.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Macy drew an arrow, nocking it as she raised her bow, aiming for the closer target. The arrow threatened to slip out of its rest, but she reined it in. The taut string pressed against her callused fingers. _A little higher._

She released. The arrow sailed out of her bow as if of its own accord, leaving behind the twanging string. On and on its arc it went, whistling through the air for the quarter second before is hit the target with a resounding thwack. If this had been a standard target, that would have been a seven-point shot (out of ten) — better than most of her schoolmates could get consistently.

“Your forearm was unsteady,” chided Huntress Wizard. “The riser must not sway with your breathing if the arrow is to sail straight.”

“Hey, that was just a warm-up shot,” Macy claimed. “Need to stretch out the ol’ arm muscles.”

“Even so. Try again.”

This went on for some time, Macy firing shot after shot and the veteran huntress giving her pointers after each one. Many of the pointers were repetitive, since knowing on an intellectual level what one needs to do differently and actually doing it are two different things. Occasionally, Huntress Wizard would step forward and physically guide Macy’s motions, adjusting her grip and correcting her stance, but for the most part she was content to advise. The last arrow in the receptacle Macy would always fire at the further target, although her aim was much less reliable for that one. Then she and HW would dash over to collect the arrows and the cycle would begin anew.

After a while, Macy slipped into a natural groove. She felt like she was the conductor of an orchestra. The bowstring was the accompaniment, the arrow her star soloist, and the thunk when it reached the targets was a very sparse percussion section. HW was — wait, no, back up. She was the performer, and Huntress Wizard was the conductor. She guessed that made the forest creatures that were now gathering around the edge of the clearing the audience? Or maybe she was right the first time, and the audience was HW.

She was the performer. She was definitely the performer, and she stood alone on a poorly-lit stage playing several instruments at once. She could never quite get a beat on what all of the instruments were, but she knew she was playing them well. In front of her stood the conductor, wearing a frilled tuxedo and waving about a knotted oak staff like a baton. Behind them, the school auditorium was filled to the brim with animals of all different shapes, sizes, and colors, cheering her on as she played, enraptured by her music.

Just as she started to recognize the piece she was playing, the thought left her, and she was at its end. The crowd burst into riotous applause, throwing pinecones and slices of cherry pie onto the stage, which Macy assumed was a good thing. HW bowed and then vanished, although Macy could spy her in the crowd. The nut took a moment to bask in the attention; she snapped her fingers and several spotlights appeared, all aimed right at her until her eyes began to sting. She threw her guitar pick into the crowd, which answered one of her questions as to what instruments she’d been playing.

Her fingers hurt as she threw the pick. No matter. The crowd was changing her name, and now more and more of the animals were shapeshifting back into Huntress Wizard. She must have really liked the show. Galé was there, too, as well as Robin and Pen, though Robin’s stripes were in the wrong order. That sometimes happened when zhe was a figment of Macy’s subconscious rather than the actual rainicorn-dog infiltrating her dreams.

A beat.

Macy closed her eyes, held her breath, and focused on the stinging in her fingers until that tactile sensation dragged her mind out of its hallucinatory reverie. She’d been getting better for a while, but every so often another episode would come over her. There was only so much therapy and non-dissociation exercises could do, and her cowardly therapist Dr. Upe refused to prescribe her antipsychotics because of “extremely high risk of debilitating long-term side effects on a developing mind” or whatever.

“Macy!” HW shouted. So that part was real, at least. “You in there, buddy?”

“Uh, yeah,” Macy replied, glancing around cautiously and patting down the Nut Bow to confirm it was tangible. “How long was I out?”

“Not more than a few seconds. You had an arrow nocked for the 25m target and then just sorta stood there for a bit. Then you fired, and missed by a good thirty degrees.”

“Yeesh.” The nut had half a mind to set down her bow and walk away after such a ridiculous fail, but the Nut Bow deserved more dignity than that. Besides, then she’d need to figure out something else to do with her life. “Well, at least nothing too bad hap—”

“When the arrow sailed into the forest, it hit something.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Closing her eyes, Macy reached out her mind into the forest, humming under her breath the melody from her hallucination, which was the melody that harmonized with the ambient sounds of the forest around her. It didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for, as a sympathetic pain flared up in her right shoulder. If she hadn’t been left-handed, that might have been a problem. Either way, she now found herself harmonizing with a boar that had been rooting just past the clearing. The poor thing.

She was about to run forward to help it, but the elder huntress held out her arm to stop her, and just as she did so, Macy felt a great rage wash over her. She dropped to her knees and slammed her fists into the ground, scraping up dirt to reveal the acrid stench of microbial decomposition. This was why HW hadn’t reached out already to identify the offended beast. Her connection ran both ways.

The boar knew where she was now, and it was pissed. It clacked its tusks once, twice, three times, and then barreled into the clearing, casually crushing a small sapling. Unable to control the rage coursing through her, Macy charged forward to meet it.

* * *

“You’re headstrong, I’ll give you that,” Jake sighed, watching as Joëlle attempted to bite off the chain part of her handcuffs. “But you’ve been working on that for three hours now, so you should realize you’re getting nowhere.”

“Bah!” Joëlle stopped chewing for just long enough to spit contemptuously in Jake’s face, although the loogie went forty-five degrees wide. “I vill not spill ze metaphorical beans to ze likes of jou.”

“We’ll just see about that.” Jake reached into his ear and pulled out the newspaper from before. “Do you know what this is?”

“I am dyslexic, jou inconsiderate mutt. Do not make me read zat.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know.” He balled up the paper and ate it, for he wouldn’t need it anymore. “Anyway, the point is that your old boss, Gasket, has been put in the slammer.”

“I ‘ave no idea who zat is, but she sounds like a dillveed.”

“In her testimony, she declared that she’d be holding her anarchist allies responsible for—”

“Zat dillveed!” Joëlle’s eyes were wide, her mouth frothing. “Ater all zat my sister did for her, all ze favors I needed to call in to get her to vork vith us, she throws it all away over nothing?”

Jake tilted his head a hundred and eighty degrees in confusion. “But I haven’t even told you what she’s holding them responsible for yet.”

“Oh, vell if it’s not for losing access to ze Mergence of Destruction during ze battle at ze tech varehouse, it must mean zat ze attack on Jugland vas a predictable fiasco and Gasket failed to isolate and capture Robin ze Rainicorn-Dog for interrogation on ze vereabouts of ze Mergence. Vizout zhir, ze only remaining lead vould be ze tracking spell on Detective T.V., but good luck getting spies in place like ve had in Jugland vizout ze ‘elp of my sister’s organization.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, the corner of her mouth curling up into a smug grin. “But jou’re not going to get any information about zat from me. Not vizout an eqval trade, at least.”

Jake morphed a fedora and sunglasses onto his head and pointedn an enlarged, hyperrealistic finger in Joëlle’s face. “Careful what you say, punk,” he warned. “I ask the questions here, unless I ask you to ask a question. This ain’t a bartering market. With that said,” he added as he settled back down, “name a price.”

“I’ll tell jou vat.” She glanced around the room, as if trying to look like she were looking for spy cameras. “I’ll tell jou all of ze logistics I vas avare of by ze time of my capture, as vell as personnel and ranks for both organizations, if zou give me an eqvivalent amount of information in exchange. By vich I mean, I vant jou to answer zis one qvestion, since it’s been bugging me for veeks: Vy are jou a doppelganger?”

He shook his head and tsked. “No way, dude. If I tell you I’m from the future, that could cause some sorta paradox!”

“Oh vell. I’ll tell jou anyvay. I don’t actually care about ze Rhodonite Ruffians — I vas mostly in it for ze fighting — and zese interrogations sessions are getting old, so I’ll be glad to be rid of zem.”

Joëlle then proceeded to let quite the copious quantity of conceptual cats out of the rhetorical bag, most of which don’t actually matter to the story except insofar as they are now known, so I shan’t bother listing them. Under the table, Jake pumped his fist in satisfaction. Another successful interview by the masterful renegade cop. That would show him for ejecting himself from the force.

* * *

Where was I before that? Oh, right, the boar.

As the angered boar and the neophyte huntress charged each other, it was not a question of which was more animalistic in its movements, which more wild and bestial in its battlecry. They were the same animal. Macy had made the mistake of attempting to connect with a mind more forceful than her own, and now she was operating on raw instinct alone. So pretty much the same as normal, except she stopped pretending to have dignity.

By some miracle, the nut retained enough sense to pivot on one heel at the last moment, redirecting her charge so that she only suffered a glancing blow of the boar’s mighty tusks against her temple. The shock and clang echoing through her head only strengthened her choler, but her body was not as invigorated as her mind. Adrenaline could only do so much when the sheer force of being knocked aside caused her knees to buckle, sending her rolling on the ground until she smashed into the smaller of the two targets.

The target snapped off its pole with a loud crack. The boar whipped its brutish head around, snapping to the souce of the sound, and made another charge much faster than Macy thought possible. There was no way she could get up in time, or even find the strength to roll away. She only hoped her tough shell would be enough to protect her.

She never got a chance to find out. With a shout of “Razzamafoo”, Huntress Wizard had switched places with Macy, and just as quickly she had taken the form of a thick-trunked oak tree towering hundreds of meters into the sky. Her roots pushed up out of the ground for meters around, propping Macy up and giving her a sense of stability that cleared her mind.

The boar smashed into the bark thick as iron, rustling the leaves above, then let out a squeal of surprise. Confused by the sudden obstacle in its path, it dashed into the forest, forgetting its vendetta. As it ran, Macy realized that the arrow in its shoulder was gone.

Then HW was back in her normal form, holding the same arrow in her hand and looking at Macy with a mixture of concern and anger. “You know that was just about the stupidest thing you could possibly have done, right? You could have gotten yourself killed.”

Macy opened her mouth to say something about her tough shell, but the words wouldn’t come out. The thought didn’t even completely form. Her mind was still catching up with what had just happened.

“I suppose this is my fault,” sighed the huntress. “I let you come out here, knowing the risks. I’m to blame. The care of nature is too… cerebral a task for a thirteen-year-old to understand the scope of. You came here because it was wild, and you wanted to be wild, and that’s okay, but I should have treated you as such and brought Robin along to deal with your episodes. I did you a disservice by acting as if you had more competence than you yet did, and this is all wrapping back around to the grass dragon stuff, isn’t it?”

Placing her hands on her aching ear slits, Macy glanced at the broken target next to Huntress Wizard, then back up. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s okay, too.” HW strode forward and knelt down to be at eye level with Macy, placing a hand on her shoulder. “What matters is that you learn from all of this, and that I do too. I can do a better job being mindful of your needs, and maybe of my other responsibilities as well. One day, you’re gonna be a full-fledged hero yourself, and you’ll need to take that same vow of responsibility. But for now, take it easy, ‘cause me and Robin will always be there to catch you when you fall off a cliff because you get distracted by a hallucination.”

“Nah.”

“Nah what?”

“Just nah.” Walking over to the target Macy picked up the top half and set it atop the splintered bottom; she then took off her necklace and re-tied it around the fracture to hold it upright. “I’m a teenager now, and that’s practically a grownup. I want the responsibility. It’s like you said — if I fail, I can learn from it.”

The elder of the two huntresses smiled. “That means you have to _be responsible,_ then. Take the actions necessary to uphold your commitment to the Law of Nature, to prove that you truly serve it. Put your well-being and the well-being of the ecosystem above your performance anxiety.”

“Aw,” Macy pouted. “When do I get to do stuff without Robin?”

“When doing so doesn’t risk something like that misfire happening again. That’s what responsibility means.”

“Fine, I _guess.”_ With a final harrumph, Macy stormed back over to the arrow receptacle to resume her archery practice, but then she put her bow away. “You’re right, though,” she admitted. “We should call it a night and do this again tomorrow morning, with Robin. It’s the responsible thing, and I’m a responsible person.”

“Fake it ‘til you make it.”

As the pair walked back to their cabin, nearby on the spirit plane the unseen spirit of the forest held up a hand in an OK sign. “I knew he had it in her,” he remarked casually to a golden owlbat perched obliviously on a branch right in front of his face. “She’ll make a fine huntress out of that one yet.”

* * *

“…and that’s all we know for now?”

“Yep,” said Robin, unfurling a sleeping bag zhe’d pulled from Tourmaline-knows-where and laying it next to the guest bed Robin was to sleep in that night. “For all her badmouthing, Gasket sure doesn’t seem willing to _betray_ her people. That’s the power of a true believer.”

“Or someone who wants to stay on their good side in case they decide to break her out,” Macy suggested.

“I mean, when you think about it, that’s just another form of true believerin’.”

“I guess that’s fair.” Lying on her back on the simple cot, Macy pulled out her re-strung necklace, now riddled with splinters and dirt. She’d have to clean that ribbon when she got back to the castle. For now, she examined the images the coin depicted — Betty Grof, and the Great Tree that was planted from Fern the Human’s seed. Were those martyrs true believers? If so, did she want to be one, given that martyrdom was a likely answer? And perhaps most importantly, “Do you think Archie’s a true believer?”

“Way I see it, she’s pretty much gonna gots to be bein’ one.”

“How so?”

“I can’t imagine she’d have sold out her family at all if she weren’t. It’s obvious those bonds mattered to her, so her willingness to sever those bonds means she saw something else as even more important.”

“Ah.” The next question was obvious. “What if she was right?”

“She wasn’t.”

“Well, obviously, but I’m just saying, what if she was?” Macy blew out the light, plunging the room into darkness, as tends to happen when the lights go out.

Robin shrugged. “Then we’d be wrong, I s’pose.” Zhe projected colorful spheres of light into the air, which danced around in unpredictable patterns. “No use dwelling on it. Either way, we are who we are.”

“That’s not very responsible.”

“Well, I am the irresponsible one, after all.”

“Would you mind maybe not being that?”

“Sure.” Zhe stretched zhir lips up to kiss Macy goodnight, and then let zhir light show fade into the ceiling as a static planetarium.

* * *

Charlie was replaying that dream about her teeth falling out and subsequently coming to life as an army of tiny teeth warriors when Robin suddenly appeared in front of her. She was so startled, she forgot about the tooth-baby-killing hammer in her paws, which meant it stopped existing and also never existed in the first place. “Stopping by for a visit?” she asked, opening up one of the tooth warrior’s mouths and pulling out a baccarat set.

“No,” replied Robin, who for some reason had long blue hair that waved dramatically in the wind even though there was no wind. “I’ve decided completely on my own without outside prompting to start taking my studies more seriously. I’ve come to practice magic.”

“That’s very good, actually.” Charlie took out the baccarat set and began dealing out cards. “I don’t actually have enough of my own magic recovered to do a session tonight, but I’m glad to hear about your resolution, and not just because I’ve missed you.”

“Oh?”

“Dark times are coming,” she intoned, picking up her hand and splaying it before her as shadows danced a mariachi around her. “Your and Macy’s paths to becoming heroes will not be easy. There is an adversary of whom you are unaware, and who is yet unaware of you, but the cards do not lie. On the day your paths cross, a chain of events will begin which may end with the destruction of all life.”

Robin gulped. “Like, on the planet?”

“That’s not what I said.”

Robin gulped again, harder.

“I don’t know who it is, but it will be someone who is a true believer in naught but herself, yet who impossibly will build up a group who share her belief; first few, then many.” Her cards burst into flames, and she sprinkled the ash over the baccarat board in a complex runic shape. “You will need every tool at your disposal to fight them. We all will.”

“Is this part of the lesson?” Robin queried, pointing at the symbol.

“Actually, I have no idea what this is,” Charlie confessed. “I was just sorta drawing. It might not mean anything.”

Robin peered at the symbol in closer detail. Wheels within wheels, gears and springs. Once around, twice around, three times five times two again the spiral turned. Letters in a language not yet invented, spelling a word whose meaning was lost long ago. It was not ash which made it up, but flakes of metal the color of the moon, which the rainicorn-dog somehow felt ought to have been green.

Zhe brushed it off the baccarat board with zhir button-laced tail, then picked up zhir own hand of cards. “Yeah, it’s probably nothing. So what’s the game?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's an illness where one of the symptoms is a need to end every chapter as ominously as possible, I think I have it. Someone send help.
> 
> But for serious, this chapter was refreshing to write after the first season's finale, which was really more of a villain-revealing stinger the size and shape of a full episode, especially considering how deliberately finale-like the _previous_ chapter had been. Macy and Robin are a joy to write, Robin's dynamic with other characters is always fun to flesh out now that zhe's actually evolved to a point where zhe _has_ one, and my girl Huntress Wizard is back again. She'll be playing a bigger role character-wise this season, so I hope y'all like goblins and are also okay with me deciding she's a goblin. And also polyamorous. I can basically do anything I want with her character and you can't stop me. Watch, next I'll make her trans. (This is not a joke.)
> 
> Of course, Huntress Wizard was only half of the episode, and the other half, Future!Jake, is something I expect to play… not as much of a role, this season. It'll be there, churning in the background, but basically everything connected to the Rhodonite Ruffians conflict exists to set up other, more interesting conflicts, like Archie's betrayal or the stuff that's going on with Charlie. I'll return to them when I can, but I have different stories to tell this season, and the interrogations with the Sisters Sergeant exists more to _wrap_ things up than set them up. This being the start of a new “season”, that's a bit of an odd take, so yes, I will follow up on this later in the season. Just don't expect it to be as important as last season's closest equivalent, which I guess would be Masse Yvoire.
> 
> Speaking of Masse, let's talk about the narrative. You may have noticed a tiny quirk of the narrative voice this chapter, namely that there were very clearly two of them, and they don't get along. Yes, that is what the Homestuck epilogues did. No, I don't plan on copying the _rest_ of it, too. Maybe some things, but in moderation. This fic is jam-packed with references, some more blatant than others, but all of them that aren't dumb jokes told by one of the narrators themselves are there for a good reason. I obviously can't tell you what that reason is yet, and if I did, you wouldn't have the context to understand it. I will, however, say this: If this story ends up being as controversial s the epilogues, it won't be for the same reasons.
> 
> On a lighter note, Macy is currently experiencing a swirl of conflicting emotions about all sorts of things during a formative time in her life, and it's likely only to get worse. I have specific ideas for what her precise feelings are toward Masse, Archie, and Princess Torte (or at least what they will be once the dust settles), but the unclarity with which she expressed those feelings in this chapter is deliberate. Being a teenager as of quite recently, Macy lacks a certain level of emotional maturity, purely as a result of lacking _experience_ with those emotions. To make matters worse, her conflicted feelings toward Masse in particular are without yet knowing that he's apprenticed to, as a certain Finn once put it, a “grey-area wet wipe” who robbed Macy of her innocence by killing a man in front of her. RIP Blondie Palmerson, you were dead by the time you appeared and got no characterization before or after because that wasn't the point of your existence, and in the end, isn't that the real tragedy?
> 
> No, no it is not.
> 
> The discussion prompt, again, is: If you were a part of any clubs during middle or high school, what was your favorite and why? I was part of an archery club, which is why Macy is an archer. Like Macy's own school club, we never went to any competitions, but in our case it was just because we were such a small club. We'd meet up once a week in the gymnasium to shoot some targets, and… that was it. It wasn't much, especially compared to the highly competitive QuizBowl team I had been on for two years previously, but I like that about it. Also I was pretty good for a novice, if I do say so myself. Not great, but good.
> 
> And finally, next time on Half Past Adventure:  
> “Pish-posh!” Tiffany made a dismissive hand gesture. “Ninjas aren’t real.”


	2. The Portal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A typical dungeon dive turns into a high-stakes mystery.
> 
> Part 1 of the 8-parter “Below”; chapter 20 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say about this one before we jump in. Well, except that obviously we're jumping into another 8-chapter arc. Last season's was “Flight of Fancy”, where Macy met Huntress Wizard, Robin met Charlie, and the Duke of Nuts met an ambassador from Lumpy Space. That last part wasn't remotely important, but it did happen. This time around we're getting to it even earlier in the season. Each season is going to have an arc like that, where the chapters are less episodic and more directly connected than usual, but I like to have some freedom about where in the season they're placed. This one's starting early because it's going to set up elements that I can play around with later on. In future seasons, the reverse might be true, where early chapters set up a big climactic megastory. You'll have to find out as it goes, while I sit here staring at an enormous outline.
> 
> Sorry about the late posting, assuming I have any fans dedicated enough to notice. Your discussion question this week is: What's a time you've meddled with forces beyond your ken?

Far below the town of Jugland, a labyrinthine mine stretches, like roots of some great tree planted over half a millenia ago by old Archibald Jugland himself. Its roots run deep, pulling ancient stenches through its vestibules of ventilation, housing a microbiome of screeching bats and rotting golems. The mines do not smell quite like the aroma of metallic dust that permeates the region on a subtle level, increasingly so since their reopening; there is something else, something wild, maybe something otherworldly.

At this moment, however, one elevator shaft in particular smells like wet rainicorn-dog.

“It’s really my fault for not rescheduling,” Macy was insisting apologetically, her dominant left hand on the elevator control box, ready to pull the emergency brake if their rickety ride entered freefall. Overzealous Icy University graduate students had made amazing repairs on most of the elevators in the mine, but those didn’t run deep enough for her purposes. “I forgot it was Robin’s bath day, and with how much fuss zhe puts up, there’s no way I’m postponing  _ that.” _

“Hey!” protested Macy’s green pith helmet, zhir horn illuminating the elevator much better than the flickering incandescent light bulb above. “If you had a good enough nose to smell your own history on your fur, you’d be mad if someone erased that, too. Besides, what are you complaining about? You can’t even feel my claws through that thick shell of yours.”

“I’m complaining about how much of a hassle you make this every time. It’s unreasonable, right?” She turned to the elevator’s other occupant, the man who had recruited the two of them for this job, to back her up.

“Absurd!” cried Tiffany Oiler. “As my good pal Jake would tell you, a dog’s scent is their whole danglivelihood, and you should be ashamed of trying to suppress zhir individuality just because the stench starts to attract rodents of unusual pies. Them’s good eatin’, especially the pies.”

Macy threw up her free hand in resignation. “Fine, whatever. At least I know Pen agrees with me, seeing as he helped me hold you down for it. I’d think your kismesis’s opinion would matter more than Some Donkus, M.B.A., but what do I know?”

Tiffany jabbed his robotic hand in Macy’s direction; the hand transformed into an airhorn, which honked out a pathetic note. “Don’t go spreadin’ mistruths about me, Damy. I’ll have you know, I only have an  _ honorary _ M.B.A. so that Dr. Gross can keep me on as her assistant. I’m not some ivory-tower intellectual hoi polloi  _ coup d’etat _ banjo-totin’ McGillicutty, ya dig?”

Macy’s hat raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Uh, no, we don’t dig. We didn’t bring any shovels. Although maybe we prolly shoulda.”

With a confident smirk, Tiffany transformed his hand from an airhorn into a dirt drill. “Shovels are for chumps, chumps! Thanks to the awesome handiwork of Dr. Gross, I haven’t needed to carry a tool around with me in over thirty years, ever since she saved me from that giant worm. And then that exploded lab. And then that active volcano. And then that full-contact poker accident.”

Macy tugged on the collar of her mandatory orange safety vest, which everyone who entered the mines had to wear so that hunters didn’t mistake them for mine monsters and shoot them. Tiffany had fashioned his into a sleeveless tank top and a set of ostentatious cuffs, while Robin had gotten out of wearing one on account of zhe was a hat. Zhe didn’t need one anyway, since zhe was naturally brightly colored. “Yeesh. That sounds nasty. Full-contact poker is seriously dangerous.”

“And illegal,” added Robin.

Tiffany put his hands on his hips, wincing as he poked his decidedly non-robotic hip with his hand drill. “Laws only matter if you hate fun.”

“Hey, I’m not judging. I’ve broken  _ way _ bigger laws than that.”

“Oh really?” Macy tried to look up at her hat, but predictably failed and instead gazed at the flickering elevator light. “When was this, then?”

“I don’t tell you everything about me.”

“You rarely tell me  _ anything _ about you.”

“Exactly.”

Ding.

As the party of three stepped out of the elevator, Robin decided to stop being a hat and resumed zhir polite, meter-and-a-half tall ‘indoor form’. Macy felt suddenly vulnerable, like a stalactite might jump down from the ceiling and punch her in the face, so she rested a hand on the hilt of the Root Sword she’d brought along just in case a mine monster challenged her to single combat. “Remind me why we’re risking our butts down here again?”

“These deep mines connect to a vast underground network of tunnels and chasms used by subterranean civilizations all throughout the last millenium,” explained Tiffany. Indeed, as they walked down the corridor lit only by Robin’s horn, the dusty and strangely animalistic smell of the mine slowly grew more cuprous and air-conditioned, and the sound of rock-breaking machinery gave way to an ethereal hum. “Beneath the Sienna Ridge lies a temple devoted to an ancient cult, who worked powerful magicks on the world as Ooo was in its infancy and constructed many great and terrible devices whose very names strike terror into the hearts of screaming babies.”

“Let’s not tell Vesper about this,” whispered Robin.

Macy gave a curt nod of agreement; her cousin was involved with enough weird cult stuff as it was. “And I take it we’re here to extract some artifact or other on behalf of Dr. Icy University?”

Tiffany stopped, taking a sticky note out from the inside of his cropped vest and holding it up to a reading light embedded in his one cybernetic eye. “No,” he said finally, “Dr. Gross raided the place a while back. We’re here to find her keys that she’s pretty sure she dropped down here, since she’s checked everywhere else.”

“Right, yeah, no, that makes sense. If I were old enough to drive that sort of thing would probably happen to me all the time.”

“And you’re here to guide me,” Tiffany continued, “because as locals, you’ll have a better understanding of the workings of the mine.”

“Just what I know from the tour Sprightly and I took, but yeah,” Macy agreed.

“And that right there is the inimitable power of networking, young hero.”

Robin bumped zhir nose against Macy’s arm; when she turned to look, zhe was looking at her askance, blinking zhir ruby eyes. “Wait up, who’s Sprightly?”

“You know Sprightly. My school friend. You met her at my birthday party, and also a bunch of times before that?”

Robin shrugged, and colorful images of smaller version of zhirself appeared around zhir head shrugging in unison. “I’m bad with names.”

“Networking,” repeated Tiffany, his voice slowly trailing off into silence.

* * *

Deep beneath the tallest peak in the Sienna Ridge, there sat a chamber untouched by time. Sealed off from the world by solid rock through forces unknown, its contents remained perfectly preserved, a time capsule which none but the omniscient bore witness to. No light shone upon the discarded relics strewn about the floor in disarray. No breeze conjured up the smell of stale incense or dusty glue. No power hummed through the antebellum electronics that run throughout it, crafted by human hands in an age before the cult which would come to occupy and later abandon this room was even a twinkle in the eye of a mischievous wizard. Here was a stillness so profound that, if it could be witnessed by mortal eyes without being instantly destroyed by the mere act of being witnessed, it would surely move them to tears.

Then Tiffany drilled a hole in a load-bearing section of the wall and caused half the room to cave in. “Nope, this isn’t it. Come on, party people, let’s keep moving.”

Macy, who had fallen behind examining a curious marking on the wall which resembled a chicken, jogged to catch up. “We’re definitely under the older part of the mine,” she said. “You can’t hear the machinery above anymore because this part’s already been stripped to deletion. There’s just that weird humming now, which wasn’t covered in the tour.”

“I’m surprised you can pick up on that,” noted Robin. “Since when was your hearing so good?”

“I’ve been communing with the bats every few minutes. They’ve been very helpful.”

“I haven’t smelled any bats.”

“They’re also ninjas.”

“Ah, that explains it.” Robin sent the light from zhir horn forward, scoping out the next section of tunnel up to the upcoming fork. Zhe hadn’t been able to do anything this advanced before zhe started experimenting with zhir powers, back in the Evil Forest; Macy was glad that zhir communion with zhir great-aunt Charlie had helped zhir find a hobby.

“Pish-posh!” Tiffany made a dismissive hand gesture. “Ninjas aren’t real.”

“Are too,” insisted Macy, folding her arms. “In fact, one of my old orphanage director’s symbiotic assistants was a ninja, or at least something similar to one.”

Tiffany snapped his fingers. “A classic case of delusions of grandeur. Trust me, I know the type. It’s sad, really. Some people just have so much potential, but they can’t let go of this ridiculous notion that they’re ‘secretly a ninja’ or ‘the lost princess of the denim kingdom’ or ‘Jake’s best friend for his entire life and the godfather to his children’, and they end up squandering all of their potential chasing a hopeless dream.”

Macy skilted. “What was that last part?”

“Oh, I met a lumberjack who thought he was royalty, but that’s not important.” Reaching the T-shaped intersection, he drilled through the wall on the opposite side, causing it to collapse and reveal a dark, barren room that shone of metal. “This looks to be one of the labs Dr. Gross raided. Her keys might be in here.”

Robin sent the light ahead into the room, and it illuminated a decrepit sight. It may once have been a laboratory, but cabinets which might once have held equipment and notes were crumbled with time and ransacked of anything except shattered vials and scraps of rotted paper. Exposed circuitry sparked on the dregs of some unknown power source, the devices they were meant to power absent. The one exception was a large, circular machine toward the back of the room, too large to steal, etched with incomprehensible runes. Despite clearly being inactive, the space inside the machine shimmered faintly on a spectrum only visible to Robin’s magic-sensitive eyes.

“Yeah, this seems like a place people would lose things,” agreed Macy. She leapt gracefully onto a desk and then tripped and fell on her face, but caught herself before she rolled of the edge and stood up again. She slowly started gazing around the room, pivoting on one foot and dilating her eyes. “If I were a key, where would I be?”

Tiffany pulled up the cuff on his right arm to reveal writing covering his wrist. “I’ve thought of that, so I prepared a poem to help us get into character. Ahem. ‘As the locksmith’s cruel gaze pierces the—’”

“I’ma try to mess with this ancient doohickey,” said Robin, approaching the large machine near the back. It looked oddly familiar, but that was probably just meaningless  _ deja vu. _ “Maybe it’s a magnetron and her keys got stuck to it when she was fiddling with the controls.”

Macy stopped spinning to glare at Robin. “Hey, what did Huntress Wizard tell us about messing with forces beyond our ken?”

“Oops.” Robin paused in the middle of fiddling with the controls. The machine lurched to life. I interceded, though subtly, and in a way which would not become clear until much later. Somewhere, a can of soda exploded.

A rip in the universe appeared, spiraling out from the center of the machine until it filled the entire ring, an iridescent portal of crackling energy. The light it gave off smelled of dust and decay, and the sound bathed the room in darkness. That otherworldly luminescence was the only light in the room, as Robin had reflexively recalled all zhir magic and coloration and gathered it into zhir horn.

Macy had her bow drawn, but her arms were trembling. There was no way she would be able to get a clean shot. Tiffany, on the other hand, was still diligently searching for his employer’s keys.

The portal flickered (that was me, sorry) and then took on a consistent purple hue as a silhouette appeared in it (not me). A figure stepped through: a tall, broad figure made of purple grain, shaped like a brutish, four-armed fighter with two large scythes criss-crossed on its back. As it stepped into the room, it looked around, taking in its surroundings, before locking eyes with Macy. Eyes was the wrong word — they were really holes where eyes ought to go — but Macy got the sense it could see her just fine. She also got the sense it meant her no harm. She lowered her bow.

Robin, having none of this, tried to turn off the portal by fiddling with the controls in the reverse direction. It did not work. This door, once opened, could not be so easily closed.

Then a small calico cat leapt through the portal yelling at the top of their lungs, plowing through the four-armed figure and reducing it to a pile of grasses before landing on Macy’s face.

“Gwragh!” Macy sputtered, throwing the cat off her face and quickly raising her bow again. “Robin, light! What’s going on?”

“Gimme a minute!” Robin shouted back, still futzing with various buttons. “I think I’ve got this. Maybe this switch was supposed to be down?”

With a sigh, Tiffany stood up from the wrecked cabinet he had been sifting through, keys in hand. He tossed the keys into his other hand before transforming the one hand into a disco ball, illuminating the room in spots of white light. One beam fell like a spotlight on the intruding cat, who had a shimmering blue spear in their claws and a red holographic badge of some sort projected onto their chest. Another illuminated the pile of grasses, which was already reshaping itself into the four-armed figure from before.

The cat flicked their tail around to gesture at their badge. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. You’ve just stumbled onto a top-secret investigation by the Pup Kingdom’s finest. My name is Agent Furonica Staplemajor, and I’m here to apprehend the lichen scaffold you see before you for crimes against the kingdom, the high princess, and the universe.”

Robin stopped what zhe was doing and tilted zhir head. “Uh, what’s the pup kingdom?”

“They didn’t seem dangerous,” said Macy, nodding at the shifting and rising mount of grasses. “They seemed… peaceful. I can tell that about people, I guess, maybe.”

“What’s the pup kingdom?”

“Don’t believe it for a second,” hissed Furonica. She leveled her spear at the figure’s back, where the two scythes were starting to re-knit themselves; a small aiming reticle popped up at the end of the spear, like one would find on an advanced battle piccolo. “That’s Amaranth, a terrorist and a threat to the stability of the kingdom. I’ve got instructions to take them down whatever the cost, and I’m very good at my job.”

“What’s the pup kingdom? Guys?”

“Okay,” said Macy cautiously. She started to back up, but her bow stayed at the ready. She then realized she’d neglected to nock an arrow, so she drew one sheepishly. “We’ll be out of your fur, then. The last thing I want is whoa!” Her foot felt air, and she crashed to the ground on her back. “Ran out of desk.”

“No, seriously, what’s the pup kingdom?”

At last the purple grasses had reformed completely. Amaranth rotated their head 180°, looking directly at Robin with their empty eyes, and spoke in a dry, distorted voice. “It is a tyrant’s toybox.”

Several things happened at once. Robin turned zhir paw into a hammer and smashed the control panel on the portal, sending up a shower of sparks that launched zhir across the room. Macy, knowing instinctively — or perhaps hoping, out of a desire for heroism — that Amaranth was telling the truth and Furonica was an agent of tyranny, fired an arrow at the cat’s spear with the intent to disarm. The spear was merely knocked slightly aside, but that was enough to make her miss, and the bolt of blue lightning she fired was instead drawn toward Tiffany’s cybernetically-enhanced body. Nobody saw what Tiffany did, save a shout of “Roly poly!”, for in the next instant the room was plunged into a darkness which the portal’s luminescence was not strong enough to alleviate.

_ “Candle shmandle,” _ said Robin.

A soft, pulsating orange light illuminated the room, coming from no clear source. Robin was now in zhir normal, seven-meter-long form, but rather than sitting curled in a pyramid, zhe had stretched herself around the circumference of the portal, drawing power from its purple light. Macy had climbed back onto the table, her bow on standby in her right hand as her left held her sword in a defensive position. Amaranth had reformed and was standing passively to the side, empty eye sockets watching the scene unfold with a vigilant yet invisible gaze. Furonica was ignoring them, now leveling her electrospear right at Macy, her ears flattened and her tail erect as she silently snarled.

It only took a moment for the room’s occupants to notice something was wrong. Where Tiffany had been standing only moments before, next to a sparking panel where a power outlet might once have been, was a single robotic arm lying on the ground clutching a ring of keys.

“Oh, no,” Macy said unenthusiastically. “Poor Tiffany, what monster could have done this, blah blah blah. What say we skip to the skedaddle, kick the cat’s tail, and be on our way?”

“You ignorant brat!” hissed Furonica, arching her back defensively. “You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, spinning impossible accusations like that. I don’t know what happened to your friend, but maybe the  _ actual terrorist _ I’m chasing who’s  _ still in the room _ has something to do with it?” She pointed a gloved paw at Amaranth, who shrugged.

“Regardless of who’s terrorizing who,” interjected Robin, stroking zhir prominent black jowls like a mustache, “one thing’s for sure. We’ve got a mystery on our paws.”

* * *

“We’ve got a mystery on our paws,” said a bipedal hedgehog in a red blazer and cargo shorts, standing next to a shattered storefront window just inside a perimeter of police tape. “Just like that tip warned ya. A robbery.”

“Indeed, Hercules,” agreed Jugland’s most prominent investigating detective, Cash Daniels. She was leaning against a nearby wall under the glass-shredded awning, getting dust on her new topcoat as she tried and failed to light up a pixie stick (made with all-organic pixie dust, of course) on that windy morning in early spring. “Though the robbery isn’t what concerns me, nor is it what brought us here. Remember, our primary concern is the disappearance that allowed this robbery to take place.”

A motorcycle came to a stop just behind Hercules, wafting unpleasant fumes past his powerful nose, and a figure decked in full guard regalia stepped off. “No, your primary concern is me,” announced Captain Amélie Faucher, glaring daggers at the private investigator.

“Oh, come on, Mél,” Cash pleaded, stepping away from the wall and twirling her pixie stick as she walked toward the guard captain. “Surely we’re on better terms now. You can’t still be holding that old incident against me, especially after we worked so well together on the Fountain Square vandal case.”

Mél adjusted her collar. “Funny, the way I remember it, you commandeered that case with the promise of cooperation and then didn’t tell me anything until days after you’d solved the case on your own.”

Cash shot her a finger gun. “But I did solve the case.”

“Whatever. You skirt the edges of regulations so regularly that I’m amazed your PI license hasn’t been revoked.”

“You’re one to talk, after that whole business with the late ambassador.”

“He died barely a year ago, you inconsiderate prick.”

“Sorry.” Cash raised her hands in resignation, then put the pixie stick back in her mouth and waved over to the hedgehog. “Come along, Herc. Let’s investigate inside.”

“Aight, boss,” said Hercules. He stuck his tongue out at a confused Mél as the two of them entered the wrecked coffee shop. “Let’s begin the investigation.”

* * *

“Let’s begin the investigation.” Robin resumed zhir indoor form and walked into the middle of the abandoned lab. “We’ll start by collecting eyewitness accounts. Luckily, all of the eyewitnesses are right here in this room, so I will be questioning each of you one at a time.”

Macy skilted. “Aren’t you an eyewitness, too?”

“Nah, my eyesight’s dreck.”

“This is a waste of time,” insisted Furonica, pacing back and forth along the opposite side of the room from where Amaranth and Tiffany’s arm were. “It’s all a distraction. As soon as we get embroiled in this, that enemy of the state over there is gonna run out that hole in the wall!” She pointed in turn toward Amaranth and the hole Tiffany had created to enter the room. “In fact, that was probably why they did it in the first place.”

“I will not run,” rasped Amaranth.

Robin lit up zhir horn and shone a spotlight on Furonica. “Interesting theory you’ve got there, and a mighty serious accusation as well. Whaddaya say to goin’ first, then?”

“Fine, then.” Furonica stowed her electrospear. “You want the truth?”

“I can’t handle the truth!” barked Robin.

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, sorry. That’s just something my P.I. friend tells me. Never mind. Truth me.”

“If you insist.” She tapped her holographic badge, which enlarged for the others to see better. In addition to her name at the top, it listed her rank as Spymaster General at the bottom; between the two was a symbol which looked like a cross between a lemon and a fat letter G, with a gemstone drawn in the middle. “As I said, I’m Agent Furonica Staplemajor of the Pup Kingdom Very Special Forces. I’m here in pursuit of that construct over there—” she pointed at Amaranth — “for numerous counts of grand larceny, insurrectionism, aiding & abetting known criminal agents, conspiracy against the crown, and operating a hurdy gurdy without a license.”

Macy looked over at Amaranth, shocked. “Wait, is this true?”

The purple golem narrowed their eyes. “Music should be free.”

“It was out of tune anyway!” snapped Furonica. “Besides which, their true crime is helping that outcast Beth, the upstart pretender to the Pleochroic Throne. Being the sponsor of the throne’s true holder, you can imagine why President Gibbon would consider this a threat, so the minute we got a lead, I was dispatched to track Amaranth down and bring them to justice. Which I can do,” she added with more than a bit of venom, “as soon as we end this charade. I ought to just blast Amaranth again, scoop them up into a plastic baggie, and be done with it, and the only reason I’m not doing it is y’all’s got a pup on your side.”

“A wise decision,” said Robin nodding, although Macy looked at zhir with a quizzical expression. She had no idea what the Pleochroic Throne was, or the Pup Kingdom, and she doubted Robin did either, but zhe was the one who’d been hanging around Cash Daniels, so Macy supposed zhe would probably better know how to extract that information. Robin cleared zhir throat. “Please continue.”

“Ain’t much more than that. I tracked the lowlife to some floating lab high above the plains, they turned on a weird portal device that looked like a modern version of the one that’s currently providing a secondary light source for this very room, we both went through, and now here we are. Are you satisfied?”

“Not even remotely.” Robin shapeshifted a pixie stick coming out of zhir mouth and illusioned up a burning glow on the end. “The problem is, you see, that I’m trying to solve a disappearance, so could you please tell me what you were doing…” Zhe lifted zhir paw and looked at zhir bare ankle. “Three and a half minutes ago?”

Furonica’s ears twitched in agitation. “It’s like I said. I took out my electrospear to try and subdue Amaranth. They were my target. It was just a shot from that kid—” she flicked her ears in Macy’s direction — “what threw off my aim. I’d assume the surge of electricity shorted the breakers, but I didn’t do nilch to your vanishing cyborg.”

“That’s, uh, exactly what you’d say if you were a person who had done not lich,” countered Macy, but even as she called upon all the antebellum sitcom clichés she thought might help her out, she averted her gaze from the cat on trial before her. “I saw you with my own two eyes, and they don’t call me Eagle-Eyed Macy for nothing.”

Robin twisted zhir neck around to look at Macy, tilting zhir head. “They don’t call you that at all.”

“Which means they obviously can’t call me that for nothing. It’s basic logic, Binny.”

“Yeah, Binny,” said Furonica. “And here’s some more basic logic. I don’t know if you inconvenient strangers have ever fired an electrospear before, but when you do, it’s got some snerious recoil. Ain’t no way I would have been able to do anything to your friend after that misfire, and even if I coulda, I’ve got no reason to. I have absolutely no idea who any of you people are.”

Macy liked to believe that she successfully hid her disappointment at not being recognized. “W-well, hmm, that is to say, you could have done it on accident when you shot that lightning bolt in confined quarters toward somebody who’s half metal. You ever think about that?”

Robin snaked a paw over to Macy’s shoulder. “Macy, the thing that’s missing is the part of Tiffany that’s  _ not _ metal.”

“Oh. Oops. No further questions, your honor.”

Zhe gave Macy a thumbs-up, then turned around and shone zhir horn-spotlight on Amaranth. “Alright then. You stand accused of big steal, help baddie, and music crime, as well as maybe making Tiff pop off. What have you got to say for yourself, you magenta-hued mammoth of a warrior?”

Furonica retched. “Hold up, are you flirting with—”

“Shhh!” Macy held a finger to her lips. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“Ignore the peanut gallery,” Robin insisted. Subconsciously, zhe conjured an array of colorful shapes to float around zhir head. “Focus on me and my questions. Give me the deets.”

Amaranth fixed their empty yet observant eye sockets on Robin’s own round-cut eyes, maintaining that gaze for several seconds as they slowly took in a deep breath. At last, they spoke in that raspy voice of theirs, like wind through a wheat field. “I hail from the future.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” said Macy and Robin at the exact same time.

“I will not reveal my purpose in coming here,” they continued, “not with my pursuer present, nor will I deny her accusations. I am indeed a thief, an insurrectionist, and a hurdy gurdy enthusiast. I do these things for my own reasons, which I place in moral import above the laws of a petty and vindictive tyrant who calls himself a president. The regime which”

A beat.

Macy skilted. “What kind of witch now?” Robin raised a paw to quiet her; she couldn’t hear Amaranth’s slow intake of breath, but zhe could.

“Staplemajor upholds literally steals the individuality of its subjects. I was created to oppose such injustices, so I do. For a reason I will not say, I traveled to a laboratory where Dr. Marhojkinz had created a portal to the past, which synchronized with the portal in this abandoned laboratory. I will admit, I had expected it to find a laboratory that was  _ active, _ but other than that and the presence of my pursuer, everything went according to plan.”

“Except those two complications cost a lot,” Robin guessed. “I don’t imagine being caught in this kinda mess is what a fine future folk such as yourself was hoping to accomplish.”

“Holy Tourmaline,” said Furonica. “Zhe’s really flirting with them.”

“Quiet your facehole!” snapped Macy. “You’re not allowed to be right.”

“Anyway,” Amaranth continued, and then stopped. A beat. “When I arrived, I locked eyes with this young archer—” they pointed to Macy with one of their bottom arms — “and saw in them the soul of a true hero, which is something I can do by the way. I am a supernaturally excellent judge of character. In that moment of distraction, Staplemajor scattered me with a direct blast, and it took all of my concentration to knit myself back together. I would have had no opportunity, then, to disturb the missing Tiffany Oiler.”

“Hold up.” Macy made a T with her arms, like when she refereed a Rads vs Revs four-square game on the middle school blacktop and someone inevitably committed a foul. “You know who Tiffany is?”

“Indeed. I have studied numerous ancient texts in preparation for this day, so I am familiar with many a hero from ages past.”

She rubbed her hands together. “Are you familiar with me?”

“Your name is Macy, correct?”

“Yes!” she beamed. “Macadamia the Nut.”

“Then no.”

“Aw.” She slumped her shoulders and relaxed her grip on her weapons.

“But I can rectify” … “that.” They produced a small silver box from somewhere inside their hand, which projected a futuristic notes program. They typed something on a virtual keyboard which was too small for anyone else in the room to make out, then pressed a holographic button, causing the projection to dissipate. “Now I have you listed.”

_ “Networking,” _ Macy whispered by reflex. She instantly covered her mouth, dropping her weapons, and glanced around, hoping nobody heard that.

Robin did not react to this, instead turning back to Amaranth. “I have no further questions at this time. You may resume, uh, doing nothing.” They nodded. “So now that that’s over with, it’s time to examine our evidence more closely, starting with—”

“No,” Amaranth interrupted, catching confused looks from the others in the room. “There is another.”

“I hate to agree with the terrorist,” snarled Furonica, “but they’re right. You still haven’t questioned Macy. She’s the only one besides you who knew the vic, and to be sure, I’m a bit offended you questioned an upstanding agent of the law like me before the only person who could possibly have had a motive, I assume.”

Robinlet out an indecisive whine, but finally cast zhir horn spotlight on Macy. “Okay, fine. Let’s just get this over with. Macy, you ready?”

“Yeah.”  _ This should be easy. I can exonerate myself no problem and establish myself as the all-loving hero I know myself to be. _

“What were your feelings toward the missing Tiffany Eugene Oiler?”

Macy gulped.

* * *

“I loved and respected him greatly! I’d never do something like that, and I’m frankly insulted you’d suggest otherwise.”

“We know,” Hercules said in a soothing voice, making placating gesticulations toward the sobbing, frizz-frazzled hazelnut before him. “We ain’t sayin’ you’ve been notched as a suspect, ‘specially since you’se the one what’s payin’ us. We just wanna crack your brother’s disappearance, same as yinz.”

Cash Daniels made no sign that she either agreed or disagreed with her assistant’s statement. “Avellana Scourly,” she demanded, “I must insist again that you answer my question. You have been attested as the last person to see Filbert before his disappearance. When and where?”

Lana clenched her fist, straining to compose herself, before lifting her head and staring down the private investigator. “Fine.” Her voice was jagged, like the spikes of a pufferfish. “It wasn’t anything major, though. It was in here, our living room. We were discussing our work days — reflecting on how our businesses were going, trading complaints, the usual. Then he headed to his bedroom to get some early shut-eye, and I left for full-contact poker night with my work friends. They can attest to that alibi,” she added.

Cash raised a hand. “We’ve already checked that out,” she said. “Please continue.”

“When I got back it was late, so I didn’t bother to look in on Bert’s room. I just went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, he was gone. I’d assumed he headed to work early.”

“Well, he didn’t,” said Hercules, hoping to remain part of this conversation. He pulled out a cameraphone and showed it to Lana. “We checked out the crime scene. As you can see from these photographs, the register was empty, but not from the robbery. Forensics found unidentified fingerprints on the outside of the register, yet the inside is clean.”

“Suggesting that he hadn’t refilled it after emptying it the night before,” finished Cash. “A simple deduction on my part, which my associate Sir Hercules Voltzman has kindly deigned to take credit for, even though  _ his _ theory had been that the robbers had wiped down the inside of the register but not the outside.”

Lana chortled. Hercules hung his head, his quills drooping.

“Regardless,” continued the detective, “it’s you I want to ask about. You said you and Filbert had been discussing work. Obviously Filbert runs your family business, the Scourly Café, but you don’t work there anymore. What is your work?”

Cash already knew the answer to that question, and Lana knew she knew because the detective mentioned clearing her alibi, but she answered anyway. “Safety compliance auditing. I work for Bane-B-Gone, a cursed item disposal firm headquartered in the Slime Kingdom but with a branch operating out of Jugland. It’s my job to make sure proper protocols are observed, and also to interface with the city and with disposal site managers.”

Cash took out a notebook and started scribbling. “And how is business going?”

“Busy. Reopening the mine has unleashed more than a few ancient curses, especially with careless Icy U grad students roaming around, and bad juju is good for business.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why is this relevant?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps it isn’t. Pursuing each vein to its bitter end is the only way to see which will lead to the motherload.”

“In that vein,” added Hercules, “did you ever bring your work home with you, so to speak?”

Lana looked at Hercules like he’d put on a cursed garment that had caused him to go mad. “Of course not. That would be very against regulations, and enforcing regulations is my entire job.”

“What about—” Hercules paused briefly as Cash tore out a page of their notebook, crumpled it up, tossed it into a trash can across the room, and made a self-satisfied “yiss.” When the moment passed, Hercules coughed and resumed. “What about Filbert? How was his business going?”

“Similarly well, for the most part. A few minor hiccups here and there, old equipment failing and needing to be replaced, but nothing the boons of new business didn’t more than offset. College students and coffee drinks go together like magpies and bells.”

Cash wrote something quickly on the next page of her notepad, then clicked the pen shut and completed the analogy. “Loudly, extravagantly, and to the displeasure of any nearby mountain jays.”

Lana rolled her eyes. “So it’s not a perfect analogy.”

“Maybe it isn’t, maybe it is. Either way, we’re done here. Thank you for your time.” She grabbed the phone out of Lana’s hands and tossed it back to Hercules as she stood up. “Herc, call the constabulary; see if they’ve made any progress on the burglary front. I’ve got some notes to transfer to permanent records before we embark on the next leg of our investigation.”

“But, why, boss?” asked Hercules, fumbling to put their phone in a jacket pocket they didn’t realize was buttoned shut. “We ain’t got slag.”

Cash gestured for Hercules to follow her out, waiting for him to catch up before lighting up another pixie stick and resuming the conversation quietly. “On the contrary; this was actually a very productive meeting. I can’t quite say I’ve solved the case yet, but I almost have enough puzzle pieces to see what the shape looks like.”

“That analogy’s always confused me ‘cuz in a jigsaw puzzle ya get to see the full picture on the box.”

The private investigator took the pixie stick out of her mouth. “Kick me down the river and call me a canoe, I’ve never noticed that. Now I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

* * *

Robin stretched zhir paw forward and morphed it into a gag to cover Macy’s mouth and stop her from talking. “Language!” zhe shouted. “Macadamia the Nut, Fourth Princess Jugland, Apprentice of Huntress Wizard, and Once and Future Savior of Ooo, you’ve got a naughty mouth on you. I don’t think your dad would be happy if he heard you use some of the words you said just now.  _ I’m _ not happy, having heard them, and I’m sure these future folk don’t like it none neither.”

“I have no opinion on such matters,” said Amaranth. “I don’t even know what half of that past slang meant,” said Furonica.

“They’re in denial,” said Robin, in denial. “Now, I’d like you to start over, but this time pretend you’re  _ not _ your mother crunked on four bottles of peppermint schnapple.”

“Okay. I can do this.” Macy took a deep breath in, then a deep breath out. “Ever since my—” She coughed.

“You okay there, Mace?”

Macy took in another large breath, which she had forgotten to do before she started speaking. “Sorry. Ever since my brother negotiated the reopening of the mines in conjunction with Icy University, there’s been increasing interest in ancient artifacts long forgotten in the caverns the mines are connected to, this portal being one of them. A professor at Icy U, one Dr. Heidrun Groß, had lost her keys on one such expedition, so she sent her assistant Tiffany to recover them and asked me to guide him.”

“Isn’t that a little weird?” Robin asked. “An aspiring hero of Ooo, taking on nonessential contract work?”

“It’s not contract work, it’s helping out. That’s what heroes do; they help, even when they don’t particularly like the people they’re helping, ‘cause if it were just about doing what  _ they _ wanted to do, it wouldn’t be heroic.”

“Fascinating. And is this the case even if the person they’re helping is a mad scientist with dark, sort of mysterious backstory?”

“Robin, I’ve told you, Dr. Gross isn’t evil. She’s just made evil decisions in the past. Working with her is a good thing, because it helps me with n— I mean, uh, forging connections that can help me be a more awesome hero in the future.”

“Right, right.” Robin conjured an illusion of a notebook and began scribbling an illusion of notes in it with an illusion of a pen, to create the illusion of professionalism. “On the subject of networking, I believe that you had worked with the victim in the past. Is this correct?”

“No, and you should know that. Tiff and I had met before, but never in a collegiate capacitor.”

“So is it safe to say that your selection for this mission came as somewhat of a shock?”

“I suppose. Mostly it was an inconvenience. I’m not a huge fan of the mines, since they usually have the grodiest bugs, and I mean, I’m a friend to all living creatures, but cave orbweavers? No thanks.”

“Speaking of no thanks, how did Tiffany behave during the expedition, up to the moment of the disappearance?”

“Like Tiffany,” she scoffed. “He acted like he was in charge just because my entire reason for being down here was to guide him. He was annoying, totally absorbed into his own world, completely bought into his own hype, and so heinously infatuated by his own supposed charisma that he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone forcing him to confront the very obvious fact that just because he’s a teenager now doesn’t mean he’s any less immature or childlike and those things will never go away and he’ll always be nothing more than the punchline in some vast cosmic comedy sketch taking down the very notion that anyone can really be a hero!”

“Mace.” Robin stretched zhir note-taking hand through the illusory notebook and put a comforting paw on Macy’s shoulder. “Tiffany’s 43.”

Macy blinked. “I knew that. That was just a hypothetical.”

“If I may interject?” asked Furonica, raising her paw politely.

Robin nodded. “You may.”

She pointed her claw at Macy, her hair suddenly standing on end, her ears flattening. “You just admitted to having a motive! That’s sufficient grounds to call for your arrest under Pup Kingdom law.”

“There is no pup kingdom.” Amaranth’s dry voice was calm and unaffected, as if rather than responding to Furonica they were simply making an unprompted observation which, by coincidence, was relevant. “It will not exist for generations.”

Robin dispelt the notebook. “Irregardlessly, the fascist bootlicker has a point. Macadamia the Nut, please recall that you are under suspicion right now. Don’t try to make yourself look more suspicious than you already are.”

“Wha— hey!” Macy took a step back, stumbling over her dropped bow. From this perspective, low to the ground, Robin and the others seemed giant, and the portal behind them the yawning maw of some ancient beast from before time itself. “Why are you doing this to me? You’re supposed to be my friend. This is all wrong. This… it’s a nightmare, it’s gotta be. Pinch me.”

Robin reached forward to pinch Macy, but to no avail. “Your shell’s too thick.”

“Rotting cruft, that means I’m lucid. Look, I admit I didn’t get along with Tiffany that well, but that doesn’t mean I’d want to and here come the hallucinations.”

Macy was sitting in the defendant’s seat in the Jugland courthouse. The honorable Judge Robin V presided, sitting in an ominous pyramid shape, a white poofy wig woven with buttons over zhir tail. Next to her loomed her defense attorney, Amaranth in a four-armed monkey suit holding a small metal disk which projected a holographic suitcase. On the other side of the courtroom, Prosecutor Furonica looked exactly the same. Macy supposed her imagination had run out of budget.

Amaranth raised their two right hands. “Motive is not enough. There must also be means.”

“Yeah, Furonica,” Robin agreed, glaring at the cat, “there must be means.” Furonica cowed her head, evidently afraid of Robin, or perhaps of what Robin was. “Macy, can you attest that you would not have had the means to cause Tiffany’s disappearance during the moments in which the lights had been turned off?”

Nothing about Robin’s tone or body language had been intended to convey a challenge. Macy, however, was not seeing  _ Robin’s _ tone and body language, so she took it as one. Standing up angrily, she withdrew her bow and nocked an arrow while spinning around on one heel — all in the space of a second, though she wobbled a bit after she came to a stop. “I call that the Jugland Gyro (name not final). I’m basically the best at it, since I invented it. I could easily have spun fast enough to hit Tiffany with an arrow, and probably at just the right angle to knock off his mechanical arm and send him crying home to Professor.”  _ Could I have? Probably, I think. _

“There, you see?” shouted Furonica, though she was a bit less animated than before. “Not only that, but her arrow was what knocked my attack into whatever made the lights go out. She could have planned out this whole thing, down to the activation of the portal!”

Macy slammed a hand over her mouth so hard her palm stung. Of all the stupid things she’d said in her life, that was the one which had the highest probability of getting her charged with kidnapping by a secret agent from the future. It handily beat out the previous record-holder: “Hey, Princeso, not that I have any specific reason to ask this, but do you think the orphanage’s food pantry is big enough to keep a robot alive in there without anyone noticing?” That one had its own fun story attached, but Macy has asked me not to share it with you. I’m sure you understand why.

“No.” Once again, Amaranth’s voice was dry and unmoved, but it also had a paradoxical intensity to it, a sharpness that pierced the veil of Macy’s waking half-dream and dumped her back into her body. “There is a problem with your theory, Staplemajor. When I stepped through the portal, I saw the one who activated the portal, and it was not Macy.”

“That’s right, you beautiful and sexy mysterious entity,” said Robin. “It’s time to turn the spotlight to the person responsible for us all meeting here in the first place.”

Zhe turned on zhir horn spotlight, pointed back at zhirself.

_ “Malgisteol.” _

* * *

In a cluttered office building on the poorer side of Jugland, Hercules Voltzman slid a sealed envelope into a mail chute slit on a wall mostly covered in pushpins and posterboard. The letter was addressed to High Constable Harriet Brunswick, to be delivered to Amélie Faucher, who had some years back stopped taking mail directly from the office in question. Cash Daniels, the office’s resident, leaned back in her chair, supporting her weight with her knees against the bottom of her desk, smoking her sixth pixie stick that day. Some days were just like that.

“There you go,” said Hercules, taking a step back to examine the hodgepodge of pictures and notes attached to the wall. Most were from various cases Cash had worked on in the past, loose ends which she hoped she might tidy up later; a few were merely things and people she thought might be relevant but which hadn’t yet acquired even the faintest connection to a crime she had been charged with investigating. Particularly egregious was the inclusion of a photograph of the junior bartender at the Gusty Goat — a decision which, from what Hercules could tell, had no clear motivation other than his boss’s discomfort with any change happening to her favorite soda bar. None of this related to the case at hand, as far as Hercules could see. “I’ve submitted the report, containing all of the nada we’ve uncovered. Now wouldja please fill me in on this supposed eureka?”

“I could,” Cash granted, taking the pixie stick out of her mouth and twiddling it in her fingers. “But I think it would be more productive if I showed you how I arrived at it. I can’t be the sole torch beating back the darkness forever, you know. At some point you need to ignite your own flame.”

Hercules rolled his eyes. “Believe it or not, boss, medical school ain’t changed my opinion a’ your ludicrous elocutions. Also, you need to cut back on the pixie dust. That stuff’ll mess up your brain.”

Cash stared a silent challenge at Hercules, but Hercules stared back; after a few tense moments, Cash sighed, pinching out the pixie stick’s flame and dropping it in a trash can next to her smooth mahogany desk. “Say what you will about my supercilious speechifying, my deductive skills are top-notch. The art of investigating is as much about determining the correct questions as it is knowing how to find their answers, and sometimes the only way to determine the right question is to exhaust all of the wrong ones first. When the truth hides in plain sight, you must first eliminate the irrelevant distractions. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack by burning the hay.”

“Couldn’t you just use a magnet?”

“For the purposes of this exercise, magnets don’t exist. Now, let’s review. The crime scene indicated that the bandits broke in yesterday morning fifteen minutes after coward’s sunrise, a time when the shop would normally have been open, except it had never opened, since Filbert had already disappeared. The last person who had seen him was his sister Avellana, who claimed he had went to bed early that night and she hadn’t seen him since. His car was missing, but it turns out his friend Pat-Leroy had borrowed it after their own vehicle slipped while driving along the Sienna Ridge.”

“Right.” Hercules tapped a part of the panorama where a name and number were listed. “We talked to the forestry guy about that, right? Wasn’t there something weird about that crash?”

“They had suspected sabotage, but cross-referencing with Pat-Leroy’s records, the problem had simply been that his car was ill-equipped to handle the sudden frost. He’d bought it slag cheap from a dealer associated with a company that also provided equipment to the mines, and by sheer coincidence, he’d been recommended that by one of their employees while talking with Filbert at the Scourly Café.”

“Barnice Hansen,” Hercules recalled, “of Sergeant Engines. I still can’t believe you made me track her down to the Bramblebush Hotel. That was such a waste of good investigating.”

Cash twirled her fingers, momentarily forgetting there was no pixie stick between them, then fiddled with her desk’s brass drawer handles instead. “Perhaps it was, but perhaps not. Barnice was a regular — she’d stop by every odd weekday to order her hot extra black half-mocha latte bolognese on the rocks — so she had a better view than anyone else we’d talked to on Filbert’s work temperament. Apparently, he had been an all-around nice guy, greeting all his customers with a smile and never getting anyone’s name wrong twice. At least, according to Barnice.”

“That mean you think that’s not actually true?”

“It means that’s according to Barnice. After that, things started to fall apart. The crime scene team determined that some unknown but likely valuable item had been taken from under the floorboards, Pat-Leroy called in to report that someone had siphoned the gas from his car’s tank while it was still in the driveway, and Mél finally officially got us banned from returning to the scene of the crime.”

“Hmph.” Hercules folded his arms. “Ya say that like it was inevitable.”

“It was, but it doesn’t really matter. The solution has been laid out before us.”

“‘Bout that. I still don’t see how. Are you implying that… I dunno… oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Barnice did it somehow, right? She worked for a car company, so she might know how to steal gas, which maybe was somehow joined to the robbery.” With a scoff, he shook his head and repeated, “I dunno.”

Cash rapped her knuckles against the mahogany desk, making Hercules look in her direction. “What did I tell you this morning?”

“That, eh, we’re not interested in the robbery, only the disappearance.”

“Correct. A break-in like that is a type of crime whose perpetrator tends to leave evidence aplenty. The constabulary, inconsistent as they are, can perfectly well handle this on their own. A disappearance is another matter entirely. With that in mind, think over the events of the day, and tell me what important piece of testimony I left out and why.”

Hercules closed his eyes and rolled up into a spiky ball in concentration. “Uh, Avellana saying she didn’t take home any cursed artifacts, and you left it out because we didn’t get a chance to investigate that, right?” He uncurled, pulling on the collar of his red blazer to shake out wrinkles. “I take it that means it’s the right question, the needle that remains after you’ve burned down the barn or whatever.”

Cash held out her hand and wobbled it. “Half the right answer, wrong reason. I left it out because as soon as she said it, I could tell it wasn’t true. She’d brought something home, alright, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s related to the other thing I failed to mention: the equipment failures.”

For a moment Hercules was puzzled, but then his eyes widened. “A curse that interfered with technology!” he exclaimed. “It must have been the thing in the floorboards. But for what reason, and what does that have to do with Filbert’s disappearance?”

With a smile, Cash said, “Nothing at all, not in the slightest. As for the reason, I have a theory, but first we’ll need to take a trip outside town, to the ski lodge Pat-Leroy had been on his way to when he crashed his car.”

“Why?”

“Because, my dear Herc, my theory is kind of weird, and if I say it and turn out to be wrong, I’ll sound stupid.”

“I can respect that.”

* * *

“Your stupid theory disrespects my time.”

“What are you talking about?” Robin asked, turning zhir gaze and spotlight on Furonica. “I’m telling you, my ‘I planned this whole thing using secret knowledge from the future’ theory is the most viable hypothesis given the facts at paw, and it deserves at least token consideration. Unless you think you can disprove it, that is.”

Furonica looked unimpressed. “I can, and it’s simple. You were (for Tourmaline knows what reason) by the portal the whole time, with me, the terrorist, and the kid between you and the vic. Based on my extremely skillful assessment of your personality and abilities, you don’t have the level of focus needed to pull off the crime under those circumstances, even with the admittedly intriguing suite of powers you claim to possess.”

“Yeah,” Macy said, nodding, then shielding her eyes as Robin turned the spotlight on her. “Also, it’s not like you have any sort of future knowledge, unless you’ve been talking to future people in your dreams or something.”

Suddenly remembering that zhe was supposed to not let on that zhe had spoken to future!Jake, Robin turned red. “Of course I haven’t done anything like that in my dreams.” Technically, that was true.

“Also, no motive,” added Amaranth. Unlike Macy, they did not react to the spotlight. “Unless you didn’t get along with Tiffany, either.”

“Nah, Tiff’s cool.”

“Exactly,” said Macy, squinting in anticipation. “Realistically, I’m the most likely candidate. Oh, that reminds me.” She pointed at Furonica and snapped. “I’m not a kid. Okay, good, got that out of my system, that was gonna bug me all night if I didn’t say it.” Robin had forgotten to move the spotlight to her, so she relaxed.

Furonica twitched her ears and flicked her tail. “I take back what I said earlier. There’s no way you could possibly have done anything like this, you’re too —  _ mrow!” _ She jumped up so high she nearly hit her head on the ceiling as Robin pointed the spotlight directly at her eyes. Clinging to the exposed ventilation pipes, she hissed, “Stop pointing that stupid spotlight at me, pup!”

“Sorry!” Robin turned off zhir horn light, allowing the room to once again be lit solely by zhir earlier spell and the portal.

“If we want to talk about realism,” Furonica continued without coming down from the ceiling, “the real best candidate would be yours truly. The nut clearly lacks the requisite experience, the construct is too much of a blunt weapon to pull this off, and the pup lacks means, motive,  _ or _ opportunity, so I couldn’t even arrest zhem if I  _ were _ in my jurisdiction.”

“Hey, speaking of which,” Robin asked, twisting zhir neck around unnaturally to look in Furonica’s direction, “how did you know my pronouns? I never said them.”

“That’s classified.”

_ “You’re _ classified.”

“That’s correct.”

“Yes!” Robin shapeshifted one of zhir paws into a trophy. “What do I win?”

“The evidence,” suggested Amaranth.

“Neato. So do I have to fill out future paperwork for the electrospear and stuff, or does it just happen?”

“No.” Amaranth shook their head and facepalmed very, very slowly. “We should examine the evidence to verify testimony.”

Robin shifted zhir paw back. “Ah, I knew I was forgetting something important. So, Exhibit A was the electrospear, right? Furonica claimed that its knockback would be too severe for her to be the culprit. Hey, Nicky,” zhe shouted, far louder than zhe needed to. “Toss me that spear, eh? I wanna test it out.”

“Never!” Furonica pressed her body further into the space between pipes, flattening her ears as if attempting to camouflage as stucco. “Nobody gets to lay a paw on Lady Zapperstick, not even a pup. That’s way against regulations, Mx.”

“Aw, come on!” Macy pouted. “It’s for the investigation. Don’t you care about justice?”

“Yeah!” With some concentration, Robin projected the word “JUSTICE” into the air above zhir, each letter a different neon-bright color. “Just-ice! Just-ice!” As zhe said each half of the word, the corresponding letters glowed more brightly.

Macy added to the chant. “Just-ice! Just-ice!” Amaranth attempted to get in on it, too, but they couldn’t match the past-dwellers’ speed, so they gave up.

“Stop it!” exclaimed Furonica, covering her ears with her tail. “Stop peer pressuring me!”

“Peer pressure! Peer pressure!” Robin tried to change the words of the chant, but zhe neglected to change the words in the air, so Macy kept chanting “Justice!”

_ “Enough!” _ Leaping to the ground, Furonica whipped out her electrospear and arced a bolt toward Robin; zhe managed to lean out of the way, but the nearby explosion as the blast hit the ground sent zhir flying into the base of the portal, causing both zhir illusory text and light spell to dissipate. True to her word, Furonica was knocked back by the recoil, grabbing hold of a broken cabinet door as she was flung toward the wall. Her silhouette from the dim portal luminescence seemed jagged and monstrous as she spoke. “I’ve humored these antics long enough. The small justice of the kidnapping I walked in on is nothing next to the grand justice of President Gibbon, and I’d sooner fry every one of you than let you so much as breathe incorrectly on my tech.“

Macy drew her bow, glaring at Furonica. “Why does that give you the right to hurt my friend, you—”

Another blast from Lady Zapperstick, a direct hit, brought Macy to her knees and made her drop her weapon once again. “Idiot!” Furonica shouted. “Stop talking! You’re all worthless simpletons who haven’t got a clue where you stand. Oh, but I’ll change that soon. Once I learn what this portal’s true purpose is, I’ll bring the whole squadron through to put a stop to it, and you’ll all learn respect for the name of Gibbon.”

The twin scythes on Amaranth’s back began to quiver, slipping through the grainy strands of their body like snakes, but before they could manifest in their doubled-up hands, a noise distracted everyone in the room. The portal flickered and buzzed, then did it again. The third time it happened, the buzzing was clearer, like a drumbeat. The fourth time, it was clearly a clap, and just as clearly always had been.

The figure doing the clapping became apparent as a silhouette formed in a portal. Macy skilted in confusion. Furonica’s eyes went wide like milk saucers. Amaranth had no reaction.

Robin, still dazed, didn’t have a chance to look up before an unaware boot stepped through the portal and onto zhir head.

* * *

“Filbert Scourly‽ What the sassafras are you doing here?”

“Why, that’s quite easily explainable, my dear Hercules.” Cash gently closed the door of the ski lodge’s private dining area behind the two of them, cutting off the warm valley breeze and leaving them alone with the presumed-missing hazelnut, looking too disgruntled at being found to continue drinking his pungent peppermint tea. “He came here of his own volition.”

“That’s right,” grumbled Filbert. “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for… say, why  _ didn’t _ I get away with it? How’d you know I’d come here?”

“Why, anyone could see you were at your breaking point. Light?” Cash held out a pixie stick plaintively toward the disappearing barista, much to Hercules’s visible dismay, but when Filbert shook his head, she put the stick away and continued. “Your sister said you’d been having problems with the machines lately, but that it didn’t get to you, and your customers had nothing but good things to say about your attitude. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s a front, and it’s a taxing front to put up. You were probably quite stressed for quite a long time — if I had to wager, I’d say it started when you got flooded with new customers from Icy University.”

“Why would that be?” asked Hercules. “That sounds like it’d be good for business.”

“Good for business, but bad for stress. It seems the new customers weren’t quite enough for Filbert to add an outsider to the family business. Remember the robbery; it was made possible because Filbert didn’t show up for work, suggesting that in his absence, there wasn’t anyone else to look after the store.”

“That is… correct,” Filbert admitted. “But a lot of people are on edge. You must have more than that. I’ll admit, I’m curious what it could be.”

“Several things, Mr. Scourly. First of all: Your friend, Pat-Leroy, claimed someone had siphoned gas from his car while it was in his garage. Trouble is, his car’s a mount of metal in some scrapyard by now. It got totaled while driving along the road that leads to this very resort, possibly as a result of a mechanical failure caused by the very same cursed artifact your sister stored in your shop’s floorboards that led to your own travails.”

Filbert’s eyes widened. “How did you figure that out?”

“I didn’t know for sure until you said that, but I figured when I learned that something had been stolen from an underfoot hiding spot in your shop’s robbery. It seems I was right to suspect you’d known it was there. However, that’s not my case.”

“Right.” Filbert stared down at his tea, contemplating the bizarre series of decisions that had led him here. “You were asking about Peel’s car, so I assume you already know the answer.”

“He was talking about  _ your _ car. You presumably still have a set of keys. It would have been child’s play for you to drive yourself out here, drop yourself off, then drive back and — wait.” Cash put a had on her chin and paced around for half a minute. “You drove out of town, realized that would be stealing, drove back, and rented a cab to the ski lodge.”

“Not gonna lie, boss,” said Hercules, “that’s some major wrassle hassle you’ve deduced right there. Kind of unlikely, when you think about it.”

“She’s not wrong though.” Filbert looked up from his tea, contemplating the bizarre series of deductions that had led Cash here. “But how’d you figure out I’d come here, specifically?”

“Oh, I just guessed. If you weren’t here, I was going to assemble a team to check every feasible hideout location in the Duchy.”

“Lucky guess then.” He stood up, picking up his tea with one hand, pinkie extended of course. “So I take it you’ll have me brought back now, just to clear all this business up? Though I guess what with all this robbery talk, I’ll still get that break I needed from the insurance payout.”

“Very true. There’s just one small point I wish for you to clarify, purely out of curiosity.”

“Why keep the artifact? Sure. It’s the same reason I ran away.” He took a long, slow sip of his tea.

“And?”

He kept drinking, slurping loudly.

“And?” Hercules prompted.

At last, Filbert down the last dregs and set the cup down. “Ah, that hits the spot. It’s those dang kids, with their cameraphones and their corporate internships and their latte bologneses. I just couldn’t handle it! I figured if I made my shop a tech malfunction hotspot, they’d stop coming, but it backfired. It’s like they’re gluttons for punishment. When that didn’t work, I just bailed. Is that a crime?”

“Not at all,” Cash reassured him, gently guiding him toward the door by the upper arm.

“Actually,” Hercules said, “knowingly and without consent subjecting someone to the effects of an irritating curse, spell, or charm is a Class Cinnamon misdemeanor per Section 84 of the Magical Standards and Practices Act, which went into effect in Citronjon of 262 BGW.”

Filbert tensed up. “Oh. Is the punishment for that… severe?”

Cash shrugged. “Can be. It depends on if you can get someone to testify to the effect of your own mental incompetence as caused by said magical affliction, which in your case is likely.”

“Well, that’s good. Would you mind, uh, doing that?”

Cash pushed open the door. It was getting late, and the warm valley breeze from below was begging to be supplanted by a cold mountain breeze from above. “I’m terribly sorry, Filbert, but that’s not my case.”

Filbert gulped.

* * *

Several things ran through Robin’s head at once. Primarily, Tiffany’s boot.

Tiffany held up his robotic hand and morphed it into a disco ball, illuminating the room in swirling spots of color. He walked over to the arm on the ground, pried open the fingers, and picked up the keys with his flesh hand, then turned to address the room. “Alright, you dillweeds,” he shouted, “this pathetic game of cat and mouse is over. I, Tiffany, am both cat and mouse, and I’m  _ feline _ tired.”

“Not to disagree,” Robin moaned as zhe forced zhir head to return to its original shape, “but I think Furonica’s also a cat.”

“What cat?” He scowled. “All I see is a gator.”

“Oh, uh, the cat’s clinging to the cabinet over by—”

“It’s a metaphor, Robin.”

Macy cleared her throat. “Speaking of metaphors, where on Abe’s red Mars have you been? What happened? What’s with the hand, and the what?”

“Roly poly, do I have to explain everything?”

“Yes,” said Amaranth.

“Very well then. You see, when these two mysterious strangers showed up through this portal with an unknown agenda, making references to kingdoms unknown, I realized they must be from some far-flung world — be it the antebellum past, the post-apocalyptic future, a distant planet beyond the reaches of our solar system, or even another universe entirely. On that basis, I decided they might have access to or knowledge of some arcane technology of the sort the brilliant Dr. Gross makes her job of studying, which would make them excellent research partners.”

“Oh, sure.” Macy picked the Nut Bow off the ground and stowed it over her shoulder. “You had all that in mind in the middle of a simple recovery mission?”

“Never miss a networking opportunity, Macy. Is that not why you volunteered to help me in the first place?”

Macy looked down in shame. She couldn’t believe she’d created a situation where Tiffany was right.

“In the interest of effective networking,” Tiffany continued, “and given the evident tensions between the parties involved, I elected to create a test which would determine whether our friendly neighborhood spy’s claims of justice were accurate, or whether our so-called terrorist was in fact a  _ bona fide _ freedom fighter. When the lights went out, I could still see perfectly fine due to my cybernetic eye’s ability to pick up on more wavelengths of light, including infrared wavelengths emitted by the portal. Before Robin had a chance to restore visibility, I scrounged around the broken electronics for spare parts, constructed a passable decoy arm, placed the keys in its palm so you wouldn’t question its verisimilitude, set up a camera in the arm that would feed back into my eye in order to monitor the room remotely, and then stepped through the portal to wait for the situation to diffuse.”

“You hid in Dr. Marhojkinz’s lab?” Amaranth asked, though the intonation was only slightly different than their non-interrogative statements.

“Hold on,” said Robin, “why wouldn’t you just use that opportunity to learn about future tech?”

“Oh, sweet, naïve, innocent Robin.” Tiffany twirled the keys around their index finger. “That would have been rude.”

“That’s more than enough talk, cyborg!” hissed Furonica, reading her electrospear for another attack. “Prepare to—”

Barely twitching their finger, Tiffany flicked the keys at Furonica, booping her in the snoot at velocity. She yowled, losing her grip on both the cabinet and spear and falling to the ground next to her weapon. With a parting hiss, she scooped up the weapon with her tail and leapt into the portal, which flickered as she passed through.

Tiffany walked over to where she landed, picking up the keys and stuffing them into a pocket on the inside of his shirt. “And that was with my  _ unenhanced _ hand.”

As Robin repeated the  _ ‘Candle Schmandle’ _ spell to light the room properly, Macy gave Tiffany an awkward thumbs-up. “Strange as it is to say, I’m glad you’re okay, Tiff. I probably could have taken care of that fascist cat without you, but still.”

Amaranth stepped forward, their scythes back on their, well, back, and reached out a hand. “While the ruse was stressful, I appreciate its necessity. I was sent to the past to find allies in the fight against Gibbon. If you are willing to consider this, I will gladly share what technological knowledge I can.”

Tiffany changed their robot hand back into a hand and shook Amaranth’s. “I can’t speak on behalf of Dr. Gross or the Ice King, but I think this could be the start of a powerful alliance.”

Amaranth shuddered. “Did you say the Ice King?”

“Yeah, why?”

They shook their head, as if trying to disturb a cobweb. “Nothing. I look forward to working with you. However…” Slowly, they turned their gaze back to the portal. “This lab’s location is known. It will take some time for Gibbon to amass a force to invade the past, but without a doubt, he will, and this world will be doomed.”

Robin grimaced. “Yeah, I tried to shut the portal down earlier, but it didn’t work.”

“This door is easier to open than to close. I can think of only one thing which I know would sever the link: The Night Sword, the last artifact of the Dark One.”

The name of that sword rung in Macy’s ears, sending her back to a childhood reading of the legendary exploits of the heroes she’d always strove to emulate. “Oh, that? That was Finn’s sword, but I think he used it to seal away an ancient evil at the bottom of the sea.”

“You must recover it, and soon. The fate of the world depends on it.”

“You had me at ‘the fate of the world depends on it.’”

“That was the last thing I said.”

“Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t stop talking sooner.”

Amaranth sighed, which was the closest they’d come that whole encounter to emoting. “Shall we go?”

Tiffany patted their pocket. “We’ve got what we came here for.  _ Allons-y!” _

* * *

Robin slammed an empty mug of ginger ale on the counter of the Gutsy Goat’s bar. “And that’s how my day went.”

“A curious coincidence,” Cash observed, swirling their own glass of cherry cola. “This world is full of them.”

“Hey, speaking of coincidences, I’ve actually got a cousin named Gibbon. Weird, right?”

“I once cracked a cold case concerning the insecticide of a ladybug dancer named Simon.” She took a hearty swig of cherry cola. “Way I see it, when you  _ stop _ finding coincidences, that’s when something’s up.”

“Yeah.” Zhe looked at zhir reflection in the bottom of the mug. “Did we do the right thing? Antagonizing the cat, allying with the construct instead?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What if you didn’t?”

“Hm?” Robin flopped zhir ears to one side in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what would you do differently now, if that were the case?”

“I guess…” Zhe sighed. “I guess nothing. It’s out of my paws now.”

“Then don’t worry about whether you made the right choice in the long term, which is out of your control. Focus on the fact that you got the best outcome in the short term, which you  _ can _ control. The big picture will present itself when it’s ready, so in the meantime, take care of the little guy.”

“I don’t know if I can. The fate of the world’s too abstract to think about, but that’s legitimately what we’re dealing with.”

“The fate of the world’s not your case, my friend.”

“Yeah,” zhe sighed.  _ It’s Macy’s. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seems healthy.
> 
> A lot happened here, so I'll start by addressing one of the several elephants currently inhabiting this room. I was trying something new with the story structure here, with the side story that's barely relevant and focuses on a minor character from Season 1. Technically, the two stories from “Scenic Lake Butterscotch” last season had even less to do with each other, but one focused on Macy and the other on Robin so it probably didn't feel as random. I'm not sure if this format works; if it does, I'm going to use it more in the future, because this plot is going to get more convoluted before it gets more coherent. There are a lot of irons in the fire, and I need to strike while the irons are hot, but not too hot to handle, because I can't handle the metaphor.
> 
> Speaking of irons in the fire, it hasn't been a secret for a couple chapters now that the narrator is a character who interacts with at least one other narrator character, but this is the first time they've interfered with the story directly, and I deliberately left it unclear how. That was always going to be the case, but I hadn't decided on whether or not to reveal that any interference had taken place until it came time to write the scene in question. Ultimately, I figured that I didn't want to wait too long on establishing that as a thing, since otherwise it could feel like a retcon when it really isn't. I don't want any ambiguity that this was planned from the start, once I finally reveal what “this” even is.
> 
> One thing that wasn't planned from the start was the character of Hercules Voltzmann. I'm sure I don't need to explain that I created him as the Watson to Cash's Holmes, which is actually the problem that led to his creation. Watson's primary role is as a surrogate for the audience to whom Holmes can explain his galaxy brain moments, but in Cash's first appearance, she was all hardboiled noir detective parody with not much to do in terms of superhuman (or supernutty) detection, and in her second and (until now) last, she had _Robin_ to be her Watson. Obviously that couldn't work here, since Robin needed to be in the mines to accidentally activate the portal, so Hercules was created. I don't remember why I called him Hercules (it's probably a pun of some sort), but “Voltzmann” is a reference to “Watson”.
> 
> Another thing that wasn't originally planned: Macy was going to be the one to open the portal. A lot was different about my original conception of this chapter, including an increased focus on Dr. Gross's dubious morality and a much more action-heavy focus once the portal was opened. That changed once I finished the first 8-parter and realized my plans for this one would have to change, based on my better estimation of how much content I could pack into a chapter. Plus, I couldn't think of a reasonable way to make the action justified, and this way gives me more space to expand the characterization of the Duchy of Nuts as a whole, something that I never feel like I've quite done enough of.
> 
> Oh! I almost didn't talk about Amaranth. They're a holdover from my very first idea for an Adventure Time story, which would have been squarely set 1000 years in the future. I remember nothing about that idea except the idea of a being made of Amaranth, who was named Amaranth, and was probably some sort of stoic badass. Veronica Staplemajor is new, though. Don't ask me what her name means, because if it meant anything, I've forgotten it.
> 
> The discussion prompt, again, is: What's a time you've meddled with forces beyond your ken? I do this all the time, but I think the least embarrassing example was the time I participated in a 2v2 SSBM tournament at my (Catholic) high school. I played a not-completely-horrible Link, but I clearly wasn't ready for even the lowest rung of competitive melee. At least I lasted longer than my partner.
> 
> Next time, on Adventure Ball Z:  
> It was a maxim widely known, and universally true, that magic, madness, and sadness ran through the veins of all those who practiced Ooo’s magic, but it seemed that whatever measure of melancholy darkened that man’s heart was outshone by the childlike joy which sprung eternal in his soul. This quality many marked, consciously or not, as being a sign of his naïvety or simplemindedness.


	3. Set a Course for Peril

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Macy and Robin put together a crew to retrieve Finn’s demon sword, per Amaranth’s directive.
> 
> Part 2 of 8-parter “Below”; episode 21 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are again! It's always such a pleasure to post these chapters. You won't notice because of my buffer, but I took a two-week break shortly before posting this chapter. Don't worry, everything's fine, and I'm back and feeling more enthused than ever about continuing the story! Though my buffer's not quite as impressive as it once was, and in the future I may have more chapters that are on the short side (still ridiculously long, though).
> 
> We're getting into the weeds of the second 8-parter, now. All of these stories are ones that I've been looking forward to telling for a long time, the events of this chapter especially. There's a reason I'm putting it so early on in the season, after all. If the previous chapter was the start of the real overarching plot of Half Past Adventure, this is the one where the protagonists start to do some protagging. Sorta. Just read the chapter.
> 
> The discussion prompt for this chapter is: Are you the kind of person who's usually early or late, and if you're usually late (for things that don't matter), what's wrong with you?

Huntress Wizard was enjoying her afternoon tea with her two favorite people and a total stranger when she heard the doorbell ring. This struck her as odd, for her rustic forest cottage did not have a doorbell.

After a moment’s hesitation, she set her teacup down. “I think I know who that is,” she said, scooting back her ornate wooden chair as she stood up from the rough-hewn wooden table that wasn’t many steps removed from the single tree stump it had obviously been carved from. “I’ll get the door.”

“Don’t be long,” said Razz Wildberry, her girlfriend, who had the leaf atop her stem fashioned into a bun. “The tea’s gotten cold enough as it is.” The fact that there was still steam rising from her cup belied the fact that this was obviously not true.

“It’s just the door.”

“If it’s Donny, tell him that he still owes me twenty dollars,” said Finn Mertens, her boyfriend, whose beard was braided with wildflowers. “I mean, I know he’s got the cash; Breadway tickets don’t come cheap like stale meat.”

“It’s not Donny.”

“I’m sad,” said the stranger, whose body was a swirling mass of shadows which HW could not look at for long without her eyes unfocusing.

“Whatever.” The huntress pushed her chair in, walked ten paces to the front of the house, grabbed her bow from a stand by the door (just in case, y’know), then opened the door.

There stood Macy, wearing the blue-grey hoodie she’d first met HW in, a pink backpack, and a disconcertingly serious expression. Next to her sat Robin, an illusion of a bell in front of zhir horn, giving off the afterglow of the magic zhe must have used to conjure the sound moments prior.

“Whaddup, my faithful student,” Huntress Wizard said, setting the bow down and stepping back so she wasn’t blocking the doorway. “This is unexpected. Wanna join us for tea?”

Macy shook her head, but entered anyway. “I tried calling you, but it didn’t go through. I take it you don’t have good reception out here.”

“That’s right…” When Robin followed Macy in without a bizarre one-liner, HW realized something might genuinely be wrong. “If you’re not here for tea, I take it there’s some other reason you’ve come all this way on no notice whatsoever.”

“You’re — ah, perfect.” Hanging zhir backpack on the ramshackle hat rack, Macy stepped into the center of the cabin, whereupon she immediately spotted the rest of the tea party. “I knew it was that time of day. Also, just the man I wanted to see.”

“Me?” asked the shadow person, perking his head up.

Macy rolled her eyes. “No, not you. I have no idea who you are.”

The shadow person hung his head. “Nobody ever wants to see me.”

Robin shapeshifted zhir right forepaw into a megaphone, which when zhe spoke into it somehow worked. “Alright, date night is over!” zhe shouted. “Or, I guess, pre-date-night tea party plus one random stranger I can barely see.”

As the shadow person began sobbing and Finn patted him on the intangible back with his one existing hand, Huntress Wizard walked up and pushed Robin’s magical megaphone down. “Okay, let’s slow down,” she said. “First of all, that random stranger is Umbris Darkprince, an emissary from the Nightmare Kingdom. He’s here because Finn’s on a very important quest to help him find his light.”

Macy gave Umbris a thumbs-up. “Discover your truth.”

“Second, but related, just because we’re in the middle of the woods doesn’t mean you get to act like a wild animal. Greetings, Macy.”

“Yeah, Macy,” said Robin. “Greetings.”

Macy side-eyed Robin, but then cleared her throat and began speaking. “Hi, Huntress Wizard,” she said. “Hi Razz, hi Finn, hi Umbris. Okay, greetings done; we’ve got Pen idling a couple groves away, so like it as I would, I can’t stay for tea. Finn, we need you for a mission of potentially Ooo-shaking importance, and when Robin prismgrammed Jake, he said you’d be here.”

“He was right,” Finn observed. “I  _ am _ here. Which is weird, since I didn’t actually tell him where I was going.”

“No time to unpack that,” Robin said into zhir microphone, making HW cover her ears and wince. “My kismesis probably won’t wait for me forever, so I’ll skip to the skedaddle. We need to retrieve the Night Sword, sooner rather than later.”

“The Night Sword?” Finn asked. “You mean the sword Peppermint Butler forged for me after I turned 17? The sword that can cut through anything, even ghosts and stuff? The very same sword that’s currently at the bottom of the ocean sealing away an ancient elemental evil, and if it’s ever retrieved that evil will awaken?”

“Yep,” Robin confirmed. “We’ve gotta retrieve it.”

Before Finn could protest, Razz spoke up. “I can see the two of you are in quite the tizzy, but I know you wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important. I’ll just give you some tea thermoses and send you on your way.”

Her huntress grimaced. “But Razz,” she protested, “what about our date night?”

“We can do that later, hunnybuns.” She scooted out of her chair and jumped up to kiss her girlfriend on her cheek.

“We’ve got time,” said Finn, “though it sounds like that may be contingent on us actually doing this.” Dumping all his tea into his mouth as he stood, he walked over and kissed HW on her other cheek. One would hope he swallowed first. One would hope.

Umbris stood up slowly and walked through the table. “Okay, I can wait.”

Finn attempted to pat him on the back again but missed, instead waving his hand through the back of Umbris’s head. “Nah, don’t worry, buddy. I’m not gonna give up on ya.” Turning to Macy, he said, “This won’t be a trivial task. We’ll need transportation to the middle of the ocean, as well as a way to keep the ancient evil sealed below the depths once we’ve removed the sword. I know a guy who can get us transport, so if you can get the other thing covered, we can all meet up at Beachport tomorrow at sunup.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Macy, sticking out her hand for Finn to shake. Finn took it, and for the second time, he was thankful that Macy was left-handed.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Robin put a paw on top of Macy’s head, morphing it into a conical hat and coloring it white. “We  _ can’t _ get the other thing, duh-doy.”

Huntress Wizard, who had been standing motionless holding her cheeks, cleared her throat. “I may have an idea about that. Head to the Ice Kingdom; there you will find an old friend of mine, Professor Simon Petrikov. I’m not allowed in Wizard City anymore, but he’s got an in, ‘cause he’s technically part of a secret magical club. He should have no problem finding a wizard capable of reapplying the seal.”

Finn brushed aside a single strand of golden hair that had fallen out of his white bear hat. “Hey, while you’re there, tell Simon I said hi,” he said.

Robin tilted zhir head in confusion. “Why would he care about what words you’ve been using?”

Everyone in the room — HW, Macy, Razz, Finn, and even Umbris — got a hearty chuckle out of that. Finn hiccupped, a little bit of tea spilling into his beard. Razz’s bun threatened to come undone from her head movements. Everyone’s favorite huntress smirked, tossed her leafy hair, and said, “Ah, that’s classic Robin.”

“Haha, yeah,” Robin said, retracting zhir paw and conjuring an illusion of drums to make an audible rimshot.  _ I don’t get it. _

* * *

“I don’t get it,” said Professor Armand Wormworthwoodward, inching his worm body over a handwritten essay with a stern scowl. “Why don’t any of these people just use magic? Surely one of them must have access to some sort of spell. It makes no sense as an exercise in fightonomics, and I should know.”

“You’re right,” Simon moaned, holding his head in his hands above the glass countertop in the faculty lounge. “You  _ don’t _ get it. There’s no magic. It’s supposed to be a simplified problem, set in the twenty-first century.”

“Your simplified is my ridiculous.” Armand adjusted his broad-rimmed glasses. “Next you’ll be telling Dr. Gross to do biology with frictionless spherical cows.”

Simon looked up; the impressions from his hands were clearly visible on his face. “I’ve spent the majority of my conscious life in a world without magic.”

“That doesn’t make it normal, you know.”

“You’re not wrong, but you’re still missing the—” He was cut off by the blessed interruption of someone knocking on the lounge door. “I’ll get that.”

When Simon opened the door, Macy of course stood on the other side, looking poised and respectable in the pastel-colored business suit Robin had shapeshifted zhirself into. “Mister Doctor Professor Sir Simon Petrikov, Esquire,” she said. “I am in need of your assistance.”

Simon scratched his head. “Most of those titles are wrong, but… I’m sorry, who are you?”

The question stung, but Macy shook her head and steadied her resolve. “I’m Jacadamia Mugland, the apprentice of Wuntress Hizard.”

“Ah, right, the determined young preteen. I’ve been told much about you by HW, and less by Marcie.”

“Hey!” Macy protested. “I’m not a preteen. I’m a post-preteen.”

“Right, of course. Are you here about Jugland business? Because that’s not really my department, unless it concerns archaeology.”

Macy shook her head. “There is some archaeological news that I’m sure Tiffany will brief you on, but I’m here for something more important: the fate of the world.” She took a step forward and raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “Can you get us into Wizard City?”

Solemnly, Simon fidgeted with a golden signet ring on his left hand, bearing an image of a crabapple tree. “That place gives me bad jujubies,” he said, “especially after what happened to poor Ron James, but if you need to get into a place like that, you must need some serious magic mojo. Normally, I’d recommend Science Whyzard as a… stable alternative, but HW knows that. She sent you my way, right?”

Macy nodded.

“She was more directly involved in the Ron James incident than I was, so if she’s sending you asking about Wizard City, she knows what she’s doing. I trust her. Armand,” he called back to the other professor, “make sure nobody touches my stuff while I’m gone. I’ve got an errand to run.”

* * *

Waiting in his car, Pen put a hand against one ear slit to block out the noise of Icy U students moving between classes, so he could better hear the phone call pressed up against the other. “Look, I’m telling you, it’s gonna be fine. Quit panicking.”

“I have every reason to panic!” insisted the voice from the other end. “It’s only been ninety days since our last incident, with Gasket, and now you’re telling me there’s an army from the future that may be invading sometime soon? Quite frankly, I  _ should _ be panicking  _ more.” _

Pen smirked, and the smirk carried through in the casual tone of his voice. “Have some faith, Mél. The kids have got a plan, and they’re more than capable of executing on it. I wouldn’t hate Robin nearly as much as I do if zhe weren’t, as you well know. Besides, worst case scenario is we blow the lower levels of the mines and crush the future army under the bedrock of the Sienna Ridge.”

Mél did not sound reassured. “Even assuming we can get something like that set up on time, doing so would greatly displease our associates over at Icy U.”

“Personally, I consider that an upside.”

“You won’t when it gives the Candy Kingdom more leverage as our primary trade benefactor.”

Pen grunted with displeasure, but his tone remained calm. “If that’s the worst thing that comes out of this, I’d—”

There was a knock on his car door.

“—hold on, I’d better get this. We can finish our conversation later. Bye.” Hanging up, he set the phone down in an empty cupholder and rolled down the window. “Yes?”

“Quack,” said a penguin in a guard uniform, brows furrowed angrily. “Quack quack quack quack.”

Pen had to lean back in order to look up at the penguin, who was holding itself up by pressing down on the bottom of the window frame with its lil flippers. “No, I can park here. I’ve got a diplomat’s sticker; it’s on my windshield.”

The penguin shook its head. “Quack quack quack,  _ quack _ quack. Quack quack.”

“What do you  _ mean _ it’s expired? I very specifically checked to make sure it wasn’t.”

“Quack quack. Quack quack quack.”

“That’s today, though. It should still be valid.”

The penguin slapped the side of the car, nearly falling, but then pushed itself further up and stood inside the window frame with its lil webby feet. “Quack.”

Pen rolled his eyes. “Oh, that’s bull—”

Out of nowhere, Simon appeared behind the penguin, picking it up and throwing it off into the distance, eliciting a startled, “Quaaaaaaaaaack!” Macy followed quickly behind, opening the rear door of the car and slipping in; Robin slid off zhir and got into the far seat.

Before Pen could process what was happening, Simon had vaulted over the hood of his car and, midair, opened the passenger side door and gotten in. “Drive,” he insisted as he shut the door and buckled up. “The sooner we get to Wizard City, the sooner we get  _ out _ of Wizard City.”

Pen drove.

* * *

As the sun drooped lower in the late afternoon sky, the shadows of a massive cliff in the middle of the barren, sandy Desert of Wonder became like a forest unto themselves. These were not the same cliffs where an extraneous Jake the Dog locked up two fencers and an egg. These held their own, far stranger secrets, some as hidden from the rest of the world as the far side of the moon from a cave-dwelling neanderthal to whom the stars may as well be diamonds. I, of course, know them all, though I shan’t bore you with the details.

An ugly purple car, driving roadless through the desert, pulled to a stop next to an unremarkable section of cliff. The rear door opened, and Macy exited it so quickly she tripped and faceplanted in the agitated dust. Robin stepped out after her, gingerly stepping over her before propping her up with zhir hind legs, as Simon got out the other side and Pen rolled down the windows to let some air in. The desert breeze was hot, but it was dry, and it was technically fresh.

“Hold on,” said Simon, raising a hand in a stop signal toward Macy. “You should stay in the car. A normie like you would never be allowed to roam Wizard City freely.”

“I’m not a normie!” Macy protested. “I’ve got huntress mojo. Wild empathy. Yeah.”

Simon grimaced. “I’m afraid that won’t cut it in there. Robin’s magical prowess should be enough for zhir to be allowed access, but sorry to say, your power isn’t so scholarly as Grand Master Wizard would allow.”

“Yeah, Macy,” said Robin in a joking sneer as zhe assumed the shape of the portly Forest Wizard. “You should be more scholarly, like me.”

Macy rolled her eyes, but reluctantly opened the car door. “It’s not fair, though. Sounds like a bunch of arbitrary rules made up by a jerk.”

“They are,” Simon agreed, “which is why I haven’t been back here in many years. Still, he’s a jerk who controls most of the magical power in Ooo, and magical power is what we need right now.”

Wanting desperately to still be a part of goings-on, Pen leaned his head out of the window. “Ain’t that always the case, huh? You’ve got to play nice with tyrants to get anything done.”

“Aren’t you the nut who once campaigned for a seat on the Candy Kingdom judiciary council on the promise of implementing the life sentence for littering, only to throw a temper tantrum in front of a massive audience when someone asked you about the prolific paper pamphlet production of your ad campaign?”

Pen rolled up the driver side window.

“Hold on,” said Macy, who had gone into the car and come out with a ukulele. She tossed it to Robin, who caught it deftly by morphing zhir butt into a catcher’s mitt. “You’d better take that. I may not be as scholarly about magic as y’all, but I do know that music is pretty powerful. That could come in handy.”

“That’s not how it works,” said Simon.

Robin picked up the uke and started tuning it, projecting a hologram of a tuning fork which then started generating a reference pitch. “I’m still keeping it, though. If I had a nickel for every time I was caught without a convenient source of incidental music, I’d be able to pay for my own personal orchestra.”

Macy skilted. “I’m confused. Can’t you just generate that magically now?”

“Oh, Macy, you naïve child.” Robin turned around and began walking toward the cliff.

Simon coughed. “This dust is bad for my lungs. Again, Macy, I’m sorry you can’t come with.”

“I’ll figure out something to take up the hours.” She climbed into the car and slammed the door.

“Right.” Clearing his head, Simon approached the cliff, then recited: “Wizards only, fools.”

Immediately, a narrow segment of cliff disappeared, revealing a pass into a colorful, bustling town. Milling about the eclectic, colorful architecture were magical beings of all shapes, sizes, and species, propelling themselves and each other through the streets and the air in bizarre ways. An enormous light bulb rode a horse made of root beer along a path made of clouds. Two bolts of lightning zapped between buildings, reflecting off the glass as they raced each other toward their shared destination. A lumbering elk-woman with muscles the size of Simon punched a hole in reality to bypass a line of pixies blocking the street. Robin, morphed back into zhir normal form, provided appropriately grandiose background music to the whole collage.

Simon checked his wristwatch, then began sprinting down the path, Robin at his heels. “We’re making good time,” he said, “so we  _ should _ have no problem beating the tail end of the club meeting, but it’s still worth it to rush in case they adjourn early.”

Robin, the poor sluggard, was already panting. “What club?”

“My old club. The Crabapple Crew.” He showed Robin the finger with the signet ring. “Back toward the end of my time as the Ice King, I formed a secret society with some other wizards, including the misfortunate Ron James. That was one of the few positive memories that stood out through the dismal haze of that long millennium, so we kept in touch after I regained my sanity. Obviously less so since I stopped visiting Wizard City, but they’re good friends and good wizards, and fortunately, one of them possesses the proper skillset to strengthen evil-binding seals.”

“I don’t see how aquatic mammals are so important for this mission,” said Robin, “but you’re the expert.”

Taking care to avoid getting in the way of the more hurried wizards, who would no doubt turn them into something embarrassing if they impeded traffic, Simon led Robin to a greasy diner next to a boarded-up storefront. The diner’s clientele, as variegated as the crowds outside, took no heed as the two interlopers ignored all signage and headed straight for the back, Simon casually dodging out of the way of a waitress carrying a tray of writhing pink spaghetti.

“Ooh, neat,” said Robin, switching zhir ukulele accompaniment to a soft, mid-tempo improvisation befitting a diner such as this. “Is this one of those clubs that has a secret entrance in the bathrooms?”

“What? No, that’s gross. They just have a recurring reservation in one of the private rooms.” As he said this, he held his ring up to a section of wall; it shimmered and disappeared, and he and Robin crossed a threshold into a smaller, cleaner room with only two tables, both near full. In contrast to the dingy lighting outside, this room was lit with several magnesium-bright candles set on either table, whose wicks danced as those gathered around talked in hushed tones. The walls were decorated with rainbows, the air smelled like a field of wildflowers, and the tables were covered with dessert trays. “Welcome to the Crabapple Crew.”

“Simon?” called a falsetto voice in the back, as a lanky blue-haired hippie stood up and waved at the newcomer with a Y-shaped wand. “Oh, it is absolutely splendid to see you again! It’s been far too long.”

“Yes, it has,” Simon agreed sheepishly. “I hope that I haven’t been excommunicated in my absence.”

“Preposterous; you were one of our founding members! Besides, we all know there was nothing personal in your decision to stay away after the incident.” A beat. “There was nothing personal in that decision, right?”

“Oh, of course not.” When Robin tugged on Simon’s shoulders, he jumped a little, then stepped aside. “Where are my manners? Danny, this is Robin V., a friend of Huntress Wizard, which of course makes her a friend to me. Robin, this is Abracadaniel, my closest friend in the Crabapple Crew, and also everyone else. Let’s see…” As Robin stepped forward so Abracadaniel could shake zhir paw, Simon pointed at each individual person in the room as he conducted a mental headcount. “We’ve got Leaf Man, Little Dude, Denise, Chondra, Alice, Ancient Narcoleptic Magus of Life Giving, Donut Witch, Rhombeaufortchamp, Lemonade 2, and some human woman I don’t recognize.”

“Barb,” said the human woman he didn’t recognize, whom I shall not describe because she isn’t relevant at this time. “I’m the accountomancer.”

“Truly, the greatest of all the majicks.” He bowed his head in respect.

“Yeah,” said Robin, transfixed on Abracadaniel producing a drooping, soggy rainbow from his wand, “I’m gonna be real, I’m metaphorically zonked out right now and did not catch a single word you said.”

Turning to see the distraction, Simon let out an uncharacteristic grunt of displeasure. “We need to focus,” he said, striding over and grabbing the top of Abracadaniel’s wand to snuff out the rainbow. “We came here for a reason, and as intoxicating as this place’s magic can be, we can’t lose sight of that.”

“Oh, Simon,” said Abracadaniel, placing his other hand on top of the professor’s, “you always were the serious one. There’s nothing wrong with a little frivolity, even when you think you’re too busy for it. Especially then, actually!”

“Yes, well…” Blushing, Simon pulled his hand away, releasing a prismatic sputter of magic. “As lovely as that sounds, we’ll have to make time for that later.”

Robin strummed a minor chord on zhir ukulele, then began rapidly plucking a flamenco melody as the chord hung suspended in the room.  _ “El roce de amor,” _ zhe half-whispered rhythmically.

Simon blushed harder. “Robin, ‘we need to focus’ means  _ you.” _ Zhe’d done zhir damage, though, as the rest of the room was now chuckling mischeivously, and Abracadaniel had a big stupid smile on his big hippie face.

“Alright, alright.” Robin switched from zhir indoor form to zhir full size and sat down in a curled pyramid, dominating the room. “Vibeharsh though he may be, Simon’s right. We came here for a reason, which I shall now explain.”

* * *

Now, hold on just a moment. I know I’ve been rather patient, but don’t you think it prudent I jump in now to explain what Masse Yvoire and Bandit Princess were doing at the time? It really is vital information, and the Witness does you a disservice by not mentioning it. Forgetting about them so soon would be folly.

* * *

Ignore the Announcer. He is mistaken. At that moment, his two favorite subjects were doing nothing of import — much like the last time he interrupted me. He simply gets jealous whenever anyone is talking about anything that does not concern him. Truthfully, I’m of the opinion that’s the only reason he showed up in the first place.

* * *

Oh! I am struck. But of course, they know that isn’t true. I shan’t tell you my real reason yet, for you do not have the context to understand it. As for the actions of Masse and BP, their contemporaneous skulduggery may not have been of importance on its own, but it did represent the path they were on in a manner which would eventually lead to its collision with Macy’s own. Besides which, what better way to represent the passage of time during Robin’s explanation of the situation than a cutaway?

* * *

The only reason that man fancies himself an Announcer is that he so loves the sound of his own voice. I know a thing or two about voices, having once possessed one that I think I was proud of, at the time. His is one that, for all its fine qualities, would drown you in its own honey if I were to let it prattle on. ‘Tis better to put a spigot on it.

* * *

Get that thing away from my mouth! You don’t know where it’s been. Fine, then, I’ll be brief. The two bandits were besetting a carriage traveling to the land of the Mountain Men, but the carriage’s driver, hearing rumors of robberies, had hired a wizard to defend them. As soon as Masse approached the cart with ill intent, he believed Bandit Princess was his quarry, and he made a pathetic attempt to tackle her. This was one of a number of incidents which convinced the two of them that they would do well to recruit magical help in addition to stealing weapons, but since it happened on the same day as Robin’s visit to Wizard City, I thought it would be more dramatic to focus on that. There, I killed the drama. Happy?

* * *

I’m never happy.

Abracadaniel, on the other hand, was a gentleman who was seemingly in a perpetual state of happiness. It was a maxim widely known, and universally true, that magic, madness, and sadness ran through the veins of all those who practiced Ooo’s magic, but it seemed that whatever measure of melancholy darkened that man’s heart was outshone by the childlike joy which sprung eternal in his soul. This quality many marked, consciously or not, as being a sign of his naïvety or simplemindedness. In truth, I have always admired him for it.

On this occasion, the prospect of potential doom and destruction did not scare him nearly as much as his mere proximity to a quest to stop it excited him. After hearing Robin recount zhir tale (leaving out any inconvenient parts, like when zhe accused zhirself of a crime zhe didn’t commit), he clasped his hands together excitedly and exclaimed, “Oh, goody!” This made him the first person in more than a thousand years to say that.

“So you see,” said Simon, standing up straighter and projecting his voice in a desperate attempt to reclaim control of the narrative, “we came here to get Rhombeaufortchamp’s help. Beau,” he added, turning to face a blue-skinned fellow with pointed ears, pointed nose, and pointed cap, “I know you’re usually busy with your experiments, but between your knowledge of abjurations and your experience modifying others’ magic, you’re the perfect candidate for this mission.”

Beau examined Simon, half-lidded. When the professor had come in e had been carving up a tiramisu cake, and e continued to do so unceasingly. Slowly, and without breaking eye contact, e scooped up a slice of tiramisu on a fork, put it into eir mouth, chewed meticulously, and swallowed. When at last e spoke, it was to ask, “Is this all?”

“Wha—?” Simon’s jaw hung slack; Robin made an illusion of an exclamation point over his head with a corresponding  _ ting _ in order to accentuate it. “What does that mean? The fate of all civilization hangs in the balance!”

“Fate hangs in the balance on a lot of things, but that’s not what I meant.” Without looking at the cake, Beau began cutting again. This garnered some attention from other club members, who had no idea if this were some sort of power play or if e just didn’t realize e was doing it. “With all this on the line, you went through all this trouble and braved this city just to ask  _ one _ of us to help you. I’m happy to help, but I don’t see why you’re not also asking after Denise & the girls, since you’re going underwater, or maybe Little Dude for some extra firepower.”

“Ah, I see. I’d thought of that, but the problem is simple: our transport.” Simon adjusted his tie, and Robin projected an image of a yellow submarine. “Finn is procuring transport on short notice, and I believe I know whence he will procure it. Unfortunately, said short notice means that we’ll only have one vessel, and it’ll be cramped. We can only bring along so many people. I, myself, won’t even be attending, though I’ll be at Beachport to see the party off.” As he talked, Robin played through a holographic visual aid, rendering the subject of his speech in blocky models.

Beau picked up another slice of tiramisu, chewed swallowed. “I don’t know Finn that well,” e mused, scratching eir chin. “Don’t know his friends at all, present company excluded. In tight quarters like that, it might be better to take someone who already gets along with him—”

Simon raised an eyebrow as he interrupted. “If you go, you can study one of the most powerful enchantments in the world up close.”

“—but I’ve always prided myself on my ability to get along well enough with anyone,” Beau concluded. “Sure, I’ll come.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Robin, noisily wagging zhir button-laden tail excitedly. Abracadaniel joined in, garnering a chuckle from Simon.

“But.” Raising eir finger, Beau drew the others’ attention once again, making them pause their dance. “I’ll need to bring one other, someone with specialized knowledge in this sort of magic. Unless, of course, you’d rather I took my chances with my usual experimental method, and we finally answered that ages-old question, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’”

Simon tugged at his collar. “No, I take your meaning. I’m sure we can accommodate one more person.”

“Excellent. You said Beachport, right?”

* * *

The town of Beachport was somewhat misnamed. It had a beach, to be sure: an impressive one, with great golden dunes sloping down into crystal-clear waters. No, it was the port part of its name which was an exaggeration, for in truth, the most it could lay claim to was a single (admittedly impressive) pier. And why not? There was hardly any call for a proper port city in Ooo, for whether or not there were other nations on other continents, none had any communication with any in Ooo, let alone trade.

Indeed, the sole purpose of Beachport was to serve as a point of ferry to a single inhabited archipelago — humanity’s last bastion — whose traffic was such that it could be ferried by one ship, a cruiseliner named  _ ISC Two-Bread _ . That ship was currently out at sea, so aside from a small fleet of fairy-sized fishing boats, the only vessel which parked alongside the pier that morning was a single yellow submarine, whose color seemed a compromise between the rolling sands and the orange-tinted coward’s sunrise from behind the dunes.

A small crowd was gathered around the submarine — Macy and Robin, Finn and Jake (not the future one), Huntress Wizard and the Duke of Nuts, and a short banana voiced by Weird Al Yankovich whom Macy had never met before.

“What’s your name?” Macy asked the banana man.

“Banana Man,” replied Banana Man.

“Neat,” said the macadamia nut. “My name’s Macadamia.”

“Neat.”

Macy checked the time on her phone. “So, you’re Finn’s submarine-having friend, huh? That must be fun.”

“Yeah.” Banana Man lovingly patted the rail of the ladder leading down into the submarine’s open hatch. “We go on all kinds of crazy adventures together, you know, when he has the time between all his  _ other _ crazy adventures. Not that I’m desperate for his approval or anything.”

Macy chuckled. “Speaking of being desperate for Finn’s approval, have I ever told you about the time I…”

She had not, of course, told this person she had just met about the occasion she proceeded to relate to him. Across the group, similarly banal and meaningless pleasantries were being exchanged. HW and the Duke recounted stories from the Great Gum War, or rather, the aftermath of the war that never was — stories with which the both of them were entirely familiar, all of them being essentially the same. Jake was chatting with a nearby fish (Secretary Cybil, who was an on-again off-again lover of Banana Man) about their mutual distrust of clownfish, and Finn (whose beard, by the way, no longer had flowers in it) was explaining to Robin how the light had been in the possession of Umbris the shadow man all along, once he had checked his sock drawer. It was the sort of conversation in which no information of value was exchanged, but rather whose sole value was in the ritual assertion of the other’s active effort to take an interest.

This did not last long before some started to grow restless, and Finn, who had worn his mechanical arm on this occasion, checked the holographic sundial which projected from its wrist. “It’s definitely sunrise,” he said. “The last crew member should have been here by now.”

Huntress Wizard made a sigh of relief, as if she had been waiting for someone else to make that observation to confirm that she wasn’t crazy. “I’ve never known Beau to be late,” she said. “Granted, I haven’t known him at all for a while now, but the mind of a wizard is like a river. Though never static, it does not change its course easily.”

Finn arched an eyebrow at his love. “Didn’t you say when we first met that exceptional beasts couldn’t fall in love?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Well, you certainly seemed to change that course pretty quickly once—”

The huntress shut him up with a tussle of his white cap and a kiss on the lips, to which Jake jokingly recoiled. Then the two clasped hands and gazed out over the sea whose waves reflected the rising sun back at them, as if expecting Rhombeaufortchamp to arrive sailing in on the west wind.

A gust of said wind forced the Duke to adjust his enormous purple hat. “Regardless,” he said, a nervous grimace upon his face, “it will not do to have such a vital member of the party absent when so much hangs in the balance. Must we now make arrangements for someone else to fulfil the magician’s role in this adventure?”

Jake opened his mouth in response, but before he could give his (probably absurd) answer, everyone looked up as the wind suddenly shifted from a cool, salty westerly off the ocean to a warm downdraft. This shift was accompanied by a high-pitched whistle, which the onlookers soon realized to be air resistance, as a large cube bathed in heavenly light appeared through a hole in the wispy clouds. No, not a cube; it more resembled an elevator, traveling down an invisible shaft faster than any elevator should, and preceded by a great volume of wind, until it crashed loudly upon the beach and sent up a massive plume of sand.

After a few moments, there was a soft chime and the noise of an elevator door opening, and as the sand settled, Macy and HW with their keen eyes were the first to identify the silhouettes of the two people now walking toward them along the pier as Beau and his selected assistant: the renowned exorcist Franz Peerenboom, better known by his trade name, Peace Master.

“Sorry about the delay,” said Beau, removing eir sunglasses as e emerged from the dust cloud. “Traffic got held  _ all _ the way up.” E snapped eir fingers, and the sunglasses turned into a puff pastry, which e popped into eir mouth.

Robin morphed one of zhir paws into a grotesquely oversized hand with which to point at PM. “Oh hey, it’s that guy,” zhe said. “I know that guy. Hi, guy!”

The exorcist startled a bit when Robin called him out, but quickly composed himself, brushing sand off of his slate grey toga. He lifted the wide brim of his hat, though since the sun was behind him, his half-bandaged face was still in shadow. “Hello, Robin,” he said, and from his voice alone, nobody could tell whether or not he was glad to see the rainicorn-dog. “I do hope the marquess hasn’t summoned any more ghosts since we last met.”

“Hey!” Macy protested, balling her fists. “I’ll have you know, I’ve never summoned a ghost in my life.”

“Macy,” said the Duke, “I believe Peace Master is referring to your elder brother.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”

Beau clapped eir hands together. “Alright, fellas, seeing as I was already late, let’s skip to the skedaddle and pile in the sub. I’ve brought some supplies—”

“Where?” Finn interrupted. “I don’t see a backpack.” He patted his, as if to demonstrate; Macy, wearing her own, nodded in agreement.

With two hands grasped about the base, Beau lifted up eir grey cap, beneath which was a suitcase larger than eir entire body. E slid the cap back over the suitcase and continued. “And I’m assuming the rest of you all have got your own supplies ready, otherwise you wouldn’t be the kind of person who should be going on a mission of this importance.”

The Duke grasped his hat as the wind direction changed from downward back to eastbound. “I’m not going,” he clarified. “I just came here to see off my daughter.”

“Same,” said Huntress Wizard. A beat. “Except replace ‘daughter’ with ‘boyfriend’.”

“I’m going,” Finn said, even though nobody was questioning that. “The Night Sword’s my blade, plus it’s mad cursed. I dunno if anyone else woulda had a hope of retrieving it.”

“And I’m coming along, too,” added Jake, wrapping an arm around Finn several times. “We’re a package deal. Plus, me and Robin can shrink down real small. You’ll hardly notice us.”

Finn raised an eyebrow. “The first time you tried that in the sub, that didn’t go so well, if I’m remembering it right.”

“Hey!” Jake barked. “I’m probably not gonna have another existential crisis, especially if I’ve got someone else around who can be the same size.”

“Yeah,” Robin agreed, “plus I can, like, see magic or whatever.”

When Macy didn’t say anything, Banana Man piped in with, “And I’m the driver! And navigator. And engineer. By the way, if any of you’s got a car that needs a tune-up, hit me up after this is over, I’d be happy to help.”

The Duke gave Banana Man a thumbs-up.

“We all know why Peace Master and I are here,” said Beau, “but since we’re apparently sharing, I’m the  _ magic _ engineer, and PM’s a specialist who owes me a favor. However, there’s still someone here who hasn’t given a reason.” He pointed at Macy. “Who exactly are you, and why are you here?”

Macy stared at Beau’s finger. “M-me?” she asked. I’m M-macadamia the N-nut, an apprentice to H-huntress Wizard, and I’m here because th-this quest is mine.” Gob, she sounded like Sprightly with all this stuttering. What about this new stranger made her so nervous?

Beau folded eir arms. “That’s not a reason. I take it you’re the one Robin mentioned who was with zhir when that grain golem showed up, but that doesn’t mean you need to be on the sub. Space is limited, so the fewer, the merrier. Why are you here?”

Macy did not even get so far as to open her mouth to speak. She had no answer. She knew why she was here, of course; the world was in danger, and there was no way she’d pass up an opportunity to go save it. What she couldn’t answer was his real question: why she  _ specifically _ was there, or rather, why she  _ had _ to be there. Saving the world was what a hero did, and a hero was what Macy was, so she hadn’t thought to question why she had to save the world. In her mind, that would have been equivalent to questioning whether or not the world even needed to be saved.

Of course, both of those are questions worth asking, but for now, Robin jumped to Macy’s defense by answering one of them. “We’re like Finn and Jake,” zhe insisted, not realizing how true — nor how false — it was. “We’re a package deal. Plus, she’s a tough cookie, and she’s got her master’s wild empathy, which could probably come in handy in the pitch blackness of the ocean trench we’re gonna explore.”

After a brief pause to consider this, Beau nodded. “Alright, we’ve got all that worked out, so now let’s set off.” Still, he was a bit slow as he climbed down the hatch into the submarine. He wasn’t completely satisfied with Robin’s explanation of Macy’s importance.

Neither was Macy, for that matter.

* * *

Huntress Wizard blew Finn one final kiss before he jumped down into the submarine so the hatch could close. After that, she whooshed around dramatically, her cape catching the wind, and prepared to turn into a hawk and take flight. She’d scarcely begun to channel the golden magic through her body, however, before she reconsidered. She’d just flown in from her cottage, and boy, were her arms tired. (I’m beginning to think I’ve been spending too much time with the Announcer.)

The Duke of Nuts, who had wandered over to a saltwater taffy stand and was currently waiting in line behind a freckled frog in a caddy uniform, a robotic clone of Princess Bubblegum, and said robotic clone’s reanimated skeleton husband, noticed HW’s awkward, non-hawkward non-exit. He didn’t know her that well, but to the degree that he did, she tended to be self-possessed to such a degree that attempting to do something and then not following through immediately registered as odd. He cleared his throat to get her attention. “You good there, buddy?” he asked.

The huntress turned toward him and sighed. As the wind blew her leafy hair out of her face, he could see the tiredness in her eyes. “It’s…” She stopped herself. “It’s personal,” she said. “Those who walk the path paved by nature are inclined to share their feelings with the birds and the trees, but not with loose acquaintances.”

As the robo-Princess and her hubby placed their order, the Duke recalled something he’d heard Macy say a couple times, which HW’s statement had brought to mind. “Traversal is nature’s pavement,” he said upon remembering it.

Huntress Wizard looked at him oddly, the way she looked at Robin whenever zhe said something weird (so almost always). She recognized the expression — she’d taught it to Macy, after all — but she didn’t see how it applied. “What do you mean?”

“Oh! Uh…” The Duke tapped his foot. He hadn’t meant anything, of course, but he figured he could think of something. When it came to him, he snapped his fingers. “You need to practice sharing your feelings with others, or you’ll never get comfortable with it, and you’ll always rely on the same dwindling confidantes.” He neglected to add the amount of hassle Macy had wrassled in attempting to confer this lesson onto Robin. That aspect of zhir character was a dusty mineshaft, hopefully, and it didn’t do to stir up rumors about those. That was how one got plucky teen adventurers devling deep into them and awakening slumbering monsters.

“That’s not quite what I meant.” She sighed. “You should go.”

The Duke frowned. Had he been unknowingly aggravating HW? He sometimes had that effect, he knew. “Well, I’m sorry if I was out of line in my comment.”

“Quite the opposite, actually. You’re  _ in _ line, so you should go to the taffy stand.” She nodded her head so that her tree branch horn pointed toward the disgruntled mermaid running the stand. The frog had already placed and received his order.

“Dear me!” He ran up to the stand and anxiously began dictating a rather complex order, which the huntress assumed was meant to feed the entire castle for a week. It involved an unusually high amount of butterscotch taffy, for some reason.

She couldn’t help but giggle at his frantic energy, as well as at the fear in his eyes when the mermaid handed him the enormous pair of bags which he clearly could barely carry. There was an earnestness about him which she recognized. “You and Macy are a lot alike,” she remarked.

“She’s certainly stronger,” he wheezed. The wind picked up a little, and he cringed, clearly worrying that his hat was going to fly away like a migratory bird looking to travel to a more temperate climate now that winter was ending.

“That’s the whole idea of coming here. Although I suppose this technically wouldn’t be the first time she’s saved the world, if what she told me about her visit to the Crystal Dimension prior to meeting me for the first time is true.”

The Duke briefly rested his taffy bags on the pier to adjust his hat and catch his breath. “In the version she told you, how many limbs did she lose?”

“None.”

“It’s probably true then.”

Sighing, the huntress reached out a hand toward one of the Duke’s bags. “You want I should help you carry that?”

“Why, thank you, yes please!” He picked up the other bag with both hands and began walking, carrying the bag behind him so that it bumped against his shins rather than his knees. “By the way, if you need me to drive you home, it’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” She hoisted her bag over her shoulder, causing several pieces of saltwater taffy to fall out onto the pier. She ignored this. “I’m proud of her.”

“Of whom?”

“Macy. She seems to have an endless supply of bravery and pluck. I’d like to say she got it from me, but in truth, she already had it when we first met.”

“Yes,” the Duke agreed; “an overabundance of it, if I’m being honest. Sometimes I’m not sure encouraging her to go on these wild adventures is responsible.”

“She’s got Goldilocks with her; nothing’s gonna happen.” Seeing the look of confusion on the Duke’s face, she clarified: “That’s Finn.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,  _ per se. _ Robin’s right; Macadamia’s a tough genus. On the psychological side, she’s got a good friend in Robin, a dedicated therapist, and she even talks to me on occasion. It’s not that I actually have a real reason to fret. I simply can’t help it.”

“I can understand that, even though I don’t feel at all the same way. In fact,” said HW, “I think I might feel the opposite. My apprentice is out there saving the world, and I worry that maybe I should be going instead. Not to protect her, but for the same reason she’s going, I suppose.”

“Well, that’s only natural, to be sure. You don’t want her to outpace you, because then what’s that say about you?”

“Huh?” She glanced at the Duke and saw an uncharacteristic smirk plastered on his face. “You impetuous walnut, that’s not what I meant.”

“What we say and what we mean are two different things, and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my eldest son is becoming a better politician than me. In fact, I’m proud of him for it.”  _ I just wish he could be a better politician than me in a less abrasive manner — although maybe the fact that I want that is merely proof of why he’s surpassing me. _

“I mean, I guess? All I really know is that I don’t want to sit back and do nothing when so much is at stake, even if I know I’m not really needed.”

“I understand that too, believe me, but there’s more to be done than just that. I have a duchy to look after, now especially. Regardless of whether this works, the mere existence of that portal means we’ll need to prepare for possible threats from below. I daresay we should have already been doing so.” He turned to face Huntress Wizard, and in place of his wry smirk was a genuine smile. “I have my own domain to protect, as you do yours.”

She smiled back. “You’re a good friend.”

“Excellent. Now, where did I park my car?”

“I have no idea; I wasn’t paying attention when you drove up.”

He scoffed as he stepped off the pier and onto the sandy beach. “Some friend  _ you _ are.” (He was beginning to think he’d spent too much time with Robin.)

* * *

“You know, Robin, I’m starting to think I haven’t spent nearly enough time with you.”

Jake and Robin were hanging out shrunk down inside the glove compartment of Banana Man’s submarine. Thanks to the buttons woven in, Robin couldn’t shrink zhir tail down, making for a rather tight fit, but they made it look comfortable. Jake could make  _ anything _ look comfortable. For now, he was having Robin teach him klondike solitaire with a set of tiny playing cards he’d bought off a dragoonfly back in 17. As zhe did so, zhe interspersed zhir instructions with unprompted quips about the members of the expedition Robin was familiar with.

“Be careful what ya wish for, poppoppop,” said Robin as zhe laid out the cards so as to demonstrate the alternation of suit colors in the tableau piles. “Pretty soon I’ll work my way around to you, although I guess a steady stream of unwarranted insults from someone three generations removed would be pretty in line with how you interact with your descendants.”

Jake wiped a tear from his eye. “It’s funny because my relationship with my children was, while cherished, inconsistent and vacillating as a result of both cultural and physiological differences.”

Banana Man reached over and shut the glove compartment before returning to examine a convoluted series of readouts on the submarine’s dash. “All systems nominal, aside from the turn signals,” he announced, “which doesn’t matter since there won’t be any other traffic headed where we’re headed.”

“Why’s that?” asked Macy, skilting.

“Oh, because we’re headed through the Sea of Sure Death.”

A chill passed over Macy, who suddenly felt the same way an archaeologist might feel upon realizing that the malevolent, omnipresent god of chaos written about in all the ancient texts was real.

Beau noticed this shift in Macy’s demeanor and gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “Don’t worry, kid, it’s just a name. Death is only  _ nearly _ sure.”

“I’m not a kid,” Macy mumbled, but her nut heart just wasn’t in it.

Finn, meanwhile, had been sitting on a bench at the side of the sub, rummaging through his backpack. At last he found what he was looking for: a yellow-white flute shaped like a lightning bolt. He began to play a meandering tune. Although the stumpy fingers on his metal hand sometimes didn’t cover the holes properly, leading to a warbling timbre, the fact that he did not falter made it sound almost intentional.

Peace Master, intrigued, walked over to where Finn was playing. “There is an ethereal quality about your music,” he observed. “Did you perhaps study an ancient word of magic written in the arcane language of Solresol?”

Finn lowered the flute and looked up at PM. “Nah,” he said, “that was just some improv. Back when I had a magic grass arm, it used to improvise all sorts of mystical math, but that’s gone now.” He sighed, his mind wandering to friends long gone. “I just have my memory of that, now, and a flute my wizard girlfriend carved from the tusk of a magical boar.”

“Well, I like it. It’s certainly better than that overproduced, artificial-sounding music that my granddaughter listens to when she studies.” He clenched his fist. “I swear, there is some evil force at the heart of the modern music industry that is corrupting it from the inside.”

“Hey, man, don’t be hatin’ on what kids like. That’s not a good look. It’s not  _ for _ you, so you can’t really be disappointed when it fails to please.”

“No, I mean I literally believe that the people in charge of producing music are part of an evil capitalist conspiracy that suppresses creativity.”

Finn stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Marceline did tell me that she had a pretty bad relationship with her producer back when she was in a duo with Spookette, and Flame Princess and NEPTR’s raps stopped being as complex after they released their second single. You might have a point.”

The exorcist got a glint in his eye. “Then will you help me rectify this wrong once this is over?”

“Nah, sounds boring.” Finn returned to playing his flute.

He didn’t get far into the next ditty when Banana Man startled him with a worrying shout: “Pals, we may have a slight serious problem!”

Finn bolted upright. “What kind of problem, BM?”

“Finn, I love ya, but don’t ever call me that again.”

“Oh, sorry.”

A beat.

Macy piped up. “What kind of problem, though?”

“Oh, right, that. Well, it appears that we’ve got something of an enormous aquatic dragon approaching the sub from the direction we’re headed.”

Beau’s eyes widened. “When you say it’s something of a dragon, that means…”

“It’s a dragon. I don’t know why I said it like that. I’m just really nervous, you guys.”

“It’s okay dude. This is a tense situation, and there’s nothing wrong with getting nervous.”

“Yeah,” agreed Macy, hoping this was true.

Beau folded eir arms. “Are we going to have a group therapy session, or are we going to deal with this dragon and  _ then _ have a group therapy session?”

“Oh, right.” Banana Man pressed a button on the dash, and a console popped up from the floor with a VR headset. “I’ve popped out the electrified harpoon turrets, so one of you go operate them. Preferably someone with good aim, and who doesn’t get simulation sickness.”

“That’smeokaylet’sdothis!” Macy ran over to the console and put on the headset. “Alright, I’m ready to I can’t see anything.”

“I’ve picked it up on the dragon radar, but it’s not actually in range yet.”

“Aw.” Macy slouched, disappointed.

“We can also have someone try to go outside and fight it, but we’re moving pretty fast and will probably only have enough time to secure one tether.”

Beau and Peace Master immediately put their fingers on their noses. Finn merely shrugged and walked over to a closet near the back of the sub. He opened it up and removed a yellow pressure suit with a fishbowl helmet, then frowned. “Hey, this thing looks a lot like the astronaut suits from your spaceship.”

“It’s a multipurpose design. It’s chiropractic, too.”

“Just what my mom slash general practitioner ordered.” With Beau’s help, he stepped into the suit, then screwed on the helmet. He grabbed a long, jagged white sword from his backpack, which he’d left on the bench, then approached an airlock by the back of the sub. “Wait, why does a submarine have an airlock?”

“I like to be prepared for this kind of situation. You’re not the only person who’s asked me to pilot a sub through monster-infested waters.”

“Yes I am.”

“Yeah, you are,” admitted Banana Man. “But still, I knew it was going to happen one day.”

“Good call.” Finn stepped into the airlock (more accurately a waterlock), pressed a button, and the door slammed shut behind him.

A few moments later, Macy shouted, “We’ve got a bogey close in! I’m gonna blast ‘em to — oh, it’s just Finn. Hi, Finn.” She joggled a joystick on the console in front of her, causing a turret beneath the sub to swivel back and forth. Finn, pulled along through the watery void of inner space on a short tether, waved back.

“Focus, Macy,” insisted Banana Man. “I could only find one harpoon that fit my specifications, so if you fire and miss, you’ll have to retract it before you can make another shot.”

“Got it.”

She closed off her mind and concentrated on the view being fed into her eyes through the headset. It was dark and dappled and murky, with colorful fish she’d never seen up close swimming all around — an undersea kaleidoscope in panoramic view. None of them particularly resembled dragons. There weren’t even any dragonfish, which she thought was quite a missed opportunity, though she supposed they weren’t deep enough for that yet.

After a few minutes, she spotted a dark mass looming in the distance, where the horizon would have been had they not been sailing beneath it. She squinted, which did nothing to help her see through the sea because that’s not how VR works. “I see something,” she called out, “but it looks more like a sea serpent than a dragon.”

“Are those not the same thing?” asked Peace Master.

“Technically, sea serpents are lizards which primarily feast on slow-moving fish and small whales, and often spend much of their lives in caverns under the sea floor. While strong, they pose little threat to marine passengers, since unlike dragons they—”

Her recitation of a library book she’d read three years ago was cut off as a hot blast of water shot from the direction of the dragon and glanced off the side of the submarine, rocking the vehicle as it created a burst of bubbles which rose to the surface. In the jolt, the camera must have been damaged, since now Macy could only see darkness.

Oops. “Update: It’s a dragon.”

Unbeknownst to Macy, Finn was quick to return fire, slicing the water with his cool sword to send out a visible shockwave in the direction of the dragon. He pressed a button on his suit, and propellers popped out of his feet and back, allowing him to maneuver more freely through the water, though he was careful not to let them get tangled in the cord which kept him tethered to the sub.

Macy took off the now useless headset and lay it on the ground beside her. Ignoring Beau’s perfectly reasonable question of what in Glob’s name she was doing, she rested her hands on the turret controls, closed her eyes, and let her mind slip away. For a moment she felt herself being pulled under, into a vision of herself trapped in one of the old-school video games she used to play back at the orphanage. Before that could happen, Robin and Jake appeared in her mind, playing a three-person card game with a rainicorn-dog she’d never seen before yet somehow recognized as Charlie. Robin gave her a curt nod, which was enough to remind her of reality, and then her mind was free.

She saw the submarine from the perspective of the fish. It was quaint and out of place, a child’s toy the color of the unfamiliar sun drifting through a realm where no children played. Tied to it like a kite on a string, Finn deflected further blasts of submerged steam from the water dragon she pursued. What a beast it was, with scales of blue and green and tyrian purple in great wavelike stripes which seemed to bend in ripples around its opalescent gillsacs. Against the backdrop of the seemingly infinite sea, the tangerine orange of its headfins shone like lucre.

With the press of a button, Macy took the shot.

The harpoon was on course to enter the dragon’s mouth, but as the beast zigged and zagged as it approached the boat, it instead took the attack in one of its long side fins. Electricity coursed through the harpoon’s cable, stunning the massive creature and sending out a pulse that scared away what fish hadn’t already fled from the great beast. The sub continued on past the immobile dragon, and Finn took the opportunity to lash out with his sword; it recovered on time to twist away, but he managed to nick its other side fin.

Macy relayed this information to Banana Man, who did not question how she knew it. Instead, he said, “That ought to buy us some time. Hopefully it’ll get scared away.”

“It definitely won’t,” said Beau.

“I know, I know. I was being hopeful. Still, now we might at least be able to outpace it until we reach the trench and need to descend. With its wings clipped, it won’t match our lateral speed, but it can still dive faster than we can.”

Eyes still closed, Macy grinned the grin of someone who knows something her audience doesn’t. It’s the same grin I’m grinning right now, as I have since I began telling you this story, and probably will continue to grin until I reach the point where all that’s left to say is that refrain which is the only true end to any story:  _ and that’s where you come in. _ “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Just get us there.”

Beau, who recognized that grin (for all wizards do), matched it with a scowl. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

“No, this is more dramatic. Besides,” she added hastily, realizing that the wizard probably wouldn’t be satisfied, “there’s not really anything you can do to help. Let’s just say that while my friend was recruiting you, I placed a call.”

Before Beau could ask a followup question, Peace Master raised his hand to stop em. “I would trust her,” he said. “She has great power within her and a strong spirit of nobility. She has earned the right to be dramatic.”

“I suppose that’s something you know about,” Beau remarked.

“Yes.”

Unprepared for this blunt acceptance, the wizard fell silent, so that only the roar of the submarine engine, the hum of electronics, the accompanied hum Macy didn’t realize she was doing under her breath, and the two dogs bickering uselessly from inside the glove compartment pierced the silence of the submarine’s trek through the ocean, pursued by a stunted dragon. With Finn at the ready, not another one of its attacks reached the ship until it began to slow in preparation for its careful descent into the yawning chasm below.

Upon that slowing, however, Banana Man once again grew worried. “Macy?” he called out. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” she replied. “The fish have sensed her presence. She rides a foreign current.”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means, so I’m going to blindly hope that it’s good.”

“It’s neutral, but it sicken-fries something good.”

Finn, who had neglected to turn on his diving suit’s radio on account of being used to relying on his robotic arm (currently inaccessible inside said suit) for communique on missions such as these, had no such assurances. All he knew was that he was drawing close to the spot he had sealed the hundred-handed elemental, his ride was slowing down, and the dragon was gaining on them.

He held his sword, Shark’s Tooth, in a defensive posture, ready to parry another blast from the water dragon. Instead, it began spiraling as it approached, so that it slowed down its rate of approach without losing speed. Rather than aiming an ineffectual heat blast, it lashed out at Finn with its seaserpentine tail, winding him and snapping his sword in two.

As the end of the jagged sword drifted away, Finn was not as worried as he might have been. Shark’s Tooth would repair itself soon enough. He was still somewhat worried, though, since it wouldn’t be fast enough to deflect the heat blast that  _ now _ the dragon was charging. He gulped. “Guys,” he said to the sea, “you’d better brace yourselves.”

The sea responded in the form of a massive, nearly invisible hammer slamming down on the head of the dragon, causing its attack to explode in a burst of hot bubbles which startled the creature away. In its place floated a girl made of water, only her outline visible as the light refracted around her, draped in a cloak made of an ocean current as she playfully tossed her somehow green-streaked hair.

“Wind under waves,” exclaimed Cragg Ambrosia, as she retrieved her arms from the shimmering water hammer and raised a teasing eyebrow. “What  _ would _ you people do without me?”

Finn shrugged, gave Cragg a thumbs-up, and propellered back to the waterlock. He gestured for the nereid to follow, but she declined, declaring, “I’ve gotta heroically watch your back, and also retrieve that sword piece before something chokes on it.”

That was all well and good to Finn. He didn’t know Cragg that well, but he knew she was familiar with the story he was about to tell the others. Now that they were at the final stretch of their journey, it was due time he explained exactly how he sealed away Magolith. There was no more avoiding it.

As the last of the water drained from the small metal chamber, Finn removed his fishbowl helmet and breathed deeply for the first time in what felt like days. He doffed his suit; his flesh arm was trembling, but his metal arm steadied it. He was ready. He had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finn, stop being a drama bean. Narrator/Witness, too; you know you're doing this on purpose, character-whose-identity-I-haven't-revealed. I know you think you're clever after shutting down the Announcer narrator like that, but you're really not.
> 
> As many of you can probably tell, this chapter took heavy inspiration from the season 8 episode “The Invitation”, which kicked off _Adventure Time_ 's own second 8-part miniseries, _Islands_. The format and context are very different — the mission here is more world-saving and less personal, and more of the chapter is dedicated to recruitment as opposed to goodbyes — as well as the fact that it's the second chapter in the arc, not the first. Of course, part of the latter is because the second through seventh parts of this “8-chapter arc” are more of a cohesive story than the first through eighth, since I'm still too early on to feel confident dedicated eight entire full-length chapters to just one storyline. Regardless, I feel like this works better as a cohesive unit than the last one did, even after a structural change which I may discuss at the end of the arc.
> 
> But let's talk about this chapter, because I actually dropped something somewhat potentially jarring that I've had in mind for a while, and for once I won't coyly dance around it. Specifically, I'm talking about the idea that Huntress Wizard and Simon Petrikov know each other. This isn't too surprising based on other things I've established in the previous season, specifically that she knew Ron James, but it's still a major connection between major characters which has zero basis in the source material. HW is enough of a loner in the show that it's reasonable to assume the relationships we see her have onscreen represent the majority of her social life in general, and if so, this implies that a lot of these connections were forged in the period between the end of the show and the now of the fic. I honestly don't know how much of an opportunity I'll have to delve into that, since Simon is one of those characters who has a definite role in the story but more in the side of the story I haven't plotted out in as much detail, like the Rhodonite Ruffians and Cragg Ambrosia, as opposed to major elements like Bandit Princess and the relationship between Pen and Robin.
> 
> Speaking of Bandit Princess, she originally wasn't going to have any appearances at all this arc, but I decided that would be a bit too long to go without hearing from the ostensible main villain, at least this early on — especially one who hasn't yet done anything to earn her stated main villain status. By the end of the season, I hope to have you all convinced that she really does fill that role. I'll also have to take some time to establish the role the Rhodonite Ruffians can fill that _isn't_ that, since they will be important in that role going forward, but that's for later. For now, go wild with speculation. After all, the Cosmic Owl has appeared twice so far, and neither prophecy has yet come true.
> 
> One last thing: I love “Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe” and hold the opinion that it is vitally important not only for the Ice King's character arc but for taking one more step toward the understanding of Ooo's magic in preparation for “You Forgot Your Floaties”. That doesn't really have anything to do with this chapter, I just wanted to get that off my chest.
> 
> As for the prompt: “Are you the kind of person who's usually early or late, and if you're usually late (for things that don't matter), what's wrong with you?” As you can tell from the tone, I'm usually late, and it's because I'm easily distracted, possibly as a result of undiagnosed ADHD. One would think that having a psychologist for a mother would lead to being more sure of one's neurodivergences. One would think.
> 
> Finally, the next-episode preview: Zhe and Jake high-fived.


	4. The Sword and the Seal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the yellow submarine slowly descends through the chasm where The Molten One is sealed, some of its crew pass time by exchanging stories.
> 
> Part 3 of 8-parter “Below”; episode 22 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for updating late, I completely missed that yesterday was my update Monday. Why did I ever think every-three-weeks was an easy to keep track of update schedule?
> 
> Anyway, I guess coming back from a long break had more stumbles than I'd anticipated, but I've set up a system that will hopefully prevent any such unexpected delays in the future. I'm still not as far ahead in my buffer as I'd like to be, but hey, at least I know the buffer itself worked.
> 
> This chapter is, yet again, an experiment — as you can tell from the description, it's got a bit of an anecdotal structure, framed by the passage the crew is on. The purpose of each anecdote will hopefully be clear once they're read. Other than what was set up at the end of the last chapter, I won't go into what the anecdotes are about ahead of time. Just let me know if this format works, because if it does it'll be a good way for me to work smaller lore tidbits into the comic in the future without stretching them out to normal chapter lengths or deviating from an unrelated chapter — rather,simply having a chapter dedicated _to_ said tidbits. Think _Graybles_ but less filler-y (ideally).
> 
> The discussion prompt this time around is: What's something you know you're good at? I wanna hear you unashamedly talk yourself up. And if you're not capable of that, just say you're good at being humble.

Jake rubbed his eyes blearily as he shlorped out of the opened glove compartment. “I hope this is important, Finn,” he said. “I was about to kick Robin’s butt.”

“But you were playing solitaire,” Robin remarked as zhe landed gracefully next to him, retaining zhir small size and using zhir own tail as a cushy seat.

Beau cast a shadowy glance at the older of the two magical canines. “Please try to take this at least somewhat seriously, Jake.”

Macy shook her head, which of course meant shaking her entire body. “Jake’s not the target audience for this address, I think. It’s, well, everyone else.”

“Ah.” Peace Master’s lids had grown heavy from the dull drone of the submarine’s engine, but as he realized what Macy had, he grew suddenly alert. “You think he means to brief us on the events of his last trip to this chasm.”

Finn, who was seated on the bench as he let his body readjust to normal pressure, nodded. “I do.”

Banana Man pressed a button on the descending submarine’s dashboard, and suitably dramatic orchestral music filled the vehicle. “This should be entertaining.”

* * *

31 years ago, there had been a war that nearly tore the world asunder. It was known by many names — the Gum War, the War of Candy Ascension, the Third Great War of Ooo — but my favorite is the War that Never Was. Two great armies met on a battlefield halfway between petulance and paranoia, yet thanks to the decisive action of Finn the human and Jake the dog, their leaders were sucked into a shared dreamscape, came to an understanding, and managed to broker a hasty treaty before a shot was fired. The only casualty of this war, aside from the mind of Peppermint Butler, was Fern after using the dreamscape (and Finn’s help) to defeat the demon who had been keeping his grass bod alive. All in all, it was the kind of unlikely confluence of events which happen all the time; it just so happened to happen in a particularly dramatic place.

While this was happening, the world was blind to a much worse threat. The King of Mars, though wise in his own way, had made a big oopsie. Tempted by grief — and by the very persuasive Betty Grof — he had helped to summon the most ancient and powerful entity in the universe, GOLB. This primordial force of destruction existed in every facet of the universe where chaos resided, and it lived only to consume and destroy that which was harmonious. King Man had hoped to rescue his lost love Margles from GOLB’s belly, while Betty wanted to return her own fiance, Simon Petrikov, to his former sanity. In the end, only one of them got their wish.

The story of how GOLB was eventually driven from this world, while fascinating, was not relevant to the story Finn would tell to the others in the submarine 31 years later. What matters is that his brief presence had devastating effects on the world at large. Upon arriving, he melded the flesh of some of the other Candy Kingdom’s soldiers into horrific monstrosities that ravaged the land for miles, but unbeknownst to those who thought themselves the world’s saviors, he also did something else: He awoke his generals.

Fire, ice, candy, and slime are the four fundamental building blocks of our reality. On our Earth, there always exist four beings who embody the wills of the elements. These elementals are tasked by cosmic forces to maintain the balance between the elements, keep magic in order, and overall ensure that the universe doesn’t go to hell. At the moment in question, the elementals are Bonnibel Bubblegum, Flame King Phoebe, Slime Princess Blobbinder, and a 21st-century human woman named Patience St. Pim who froze herself in a ball of ice deep inside what is now the Ice Kingdom — twice, in fact. I’m sure you can figure out which elemental goes to which element.

Trouble is, there’s nothing about the elements which suggests that their natural will is to strive to be in harmony with each other, as indeed it isn’t. There exist, had existed, and always shall exist four equal and opposite counterparts to the familiar elementals: hundred handed giants who do not reincarnate but simply form new bodies out of the very element they control. These entropic elementals, called Hecatoncheires, represent the world as it was before any order had formed from the big bang that started it all off. Their goal is naught but the obliteration of order on a molecular level, which just so happens to align with GOLB’s nature as a being who both feeds on and creates chaos. Thus they have served as his generals for all of time, and they always will.

For time untold, they had slumbered beneath Earth’s surface, but the Mushroom War changed that. Humanity, seeking a way to fight the monsters they had unleashed and/or become, awoke an ancient sleeper, whose actions in turn awoke the Hecatoncheires. The devastation they wrought was such that a large chunk of the planet was destroyed (which also had a very minor, almost unnoticeable impact on the number of days in a year). A brave adventurer used the Enchiridion to seek out Prismo the Wishmaster and seal the Hecatoncheires away again, but that part of the story wasn’t something Finn knew of yet. What matters is that GOLB was stronger than Prismo, so upon his return, his generals were once again free.

They didn’t wake up right away, though. GOLB was banished before he could finish the process, so their seals were not destroyed, merely weakened. Also, being trapped inside the planet for centuries tends to leave one rather sore when they awaken, although it certainly wasn’t the longest they’d been so trapped. The tremors from their imminent arrival could be felt years in advance, so even as they cleaned up the physical and sociopolitical wreckage from GOLB’s direct assault, the heroes of Ooo were preparing to defend against the approaching threat.

In the end, it was decided that the only ones who should fight the elementals were the elementals. That meant Bonnibel, Phoebe, and Blobbinder, but the aforementioned ball of ice which that tranch Patience had trapped herself in presented a problem. Although Phoebe and a cohort of her fireborn citizens had attempted to unfreeze her, it was no avail. The Ice King (the one formerly known as Gunther) would have to be present in her stead.

There were three others on this expedition. Lumpy Space Princess, being an anti-elemental, was brought along in the hopes that her powers could counter those of the entropic elementals. They couldn’t, and she mostly ended up getting in the way, but at that point nobody had the spine to tell her no. Finn also came, but for more valid — and complicated — reasons. A crucial component of the plan was to trap the Hecatoncheires with the remnants of their previous seal. This magic, which had seeped into the Earth, was being drawn up into the roots of the Great Tree, and since that tree was grown from a seed which came from a version of Finn, he had a unique ability to resonate with and call upon this seal. The third expedition member was Jake, who was a very powerful fighter, but really he was just there because Finn was.

The sealings of the candy, slime, and fire Hecatoncheires went as planned, LSP precluded, but the fire one presented a challenge. For one thing, Magolith the Molten One, as it was called, made its base deep beneath the waters, which did not agree with Phoebe. For another, the elemental whose powers best counteracted it was currently frozen, and the Ice King was not a suitable replacement. Help came in the form of Canyon.

* * *

“Who’s that?” asked Banana Man.

“You remember Billy? The famous hero who trained me in the ways of being all awesome and junk?”

“Not a clue.”

“She was his ten-foot-tall water elemental ex-girlfriend.”

“Sounds like a babe.”

“She was a real tall glass of water,” Jake butted in.

Beau crossed eir arms, unimpressed. “Aren’t you married?”

Jake shapeshifted a giant finger so he could wag it. “Lady Rainicorn isn’t my wife, she’s my girlfriend whom I’ve been dating for thirty-nine years and have had several children with.”

Macy had her hands pressed firmly against her ear slits. “Please continue the story, Finn.”

“Right, then,” said Finn. “Where were we?”

“The same place we are now,” replied Peace Master in a low, gravely voice. “The wheel of time turns sure as the darkness is chased out by the dawn.”

“…if you say so.” Finn cleared his throat. “Prubs’s submarine was—”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Banana Man, “but who’s Prubs?”

“Oh, that’s what I call PB. Princess Bubblegum.”

“That’s a terrible nickname.”

“You’re wrong, but whatever. Her submarine was descending into this very chasm when we were attacked by Magolith’s minions, these creepy spirits made of volcanic dust or whatever. All the general guys had some sorta minions, but these ones were trickier to deal with since we had to fight from inside a submarine.”

“That’s odd,” remarked Beau. “I’d think that PB of all people would have any vehicle she made decked out with more weapons than the head of that wizard whose head is always covered in weapons.”

“You mean Weapon Head Wizard?” asked Jake. “Surprisingly, he’s actually pretty chill once you get to know him.”

Robin tilted zhir head. “I’d think that wearing so many weapons would make you hot rather quickly.”

Macy nudged Robin with her elbow. “I guess I know your type now, eh?”  _ I mean, Pen does always carry around that lance, and that Jeff guy must have a reason for wearing so many belts… _

Robin blinked in confusion. “What?”

Macy blinked in desperately trying to press the undo button on her previous social interaction. “What? OK, Finn, resume.”

“The ship’s weapons worked to keep them away as we descended,” Finn resumed, “but they didn’t do too much to thin the herd. That meant that once we docked and started fighting hand-to-hand in the candy pressure suits Brubs conjured for the non-stretchy of us, we also had to fight through a much thicker swarm of minions than we normally did just to get a clean hit on the main boss.”

Macy looked around, as if she could see past the submarine’s hull (technically she could, but not with her own eyes). “Are they gonna be here now, too?”

PM shook his head. “I doubt they respawn. Forces of primal terror like what we’re dealing with typically need to be active for at least one attack phase before they can start generating cannon fodder minions, and that can’t happen until we trigger its escape plot by advancing the sword retrieval quest.”

“Hey, aren’t you that spirit guy?” called Banana Man. “Why did you describe that like a video game instead of with spiritual mumbo jumbo, which this totally is?”

The exorcist shrugged. “A man needs his hobbies. Though, truth be told, I know most of this from hanging out with my daughter. She’s a lot cooler than I am.”

“Can I get five sentences in before being interrupted?” asked Finn, now red in the face.

“Nope,” responded Beau. “Not with this crowd.”

Finn sighed. “As I was saying, we were struggling against this giant and its weird lava hands that reached out of everywhere, but we weren’t the only ones fighting against it. These minions had been harassing a nearby shoal town for tributes and cult converts, and I guess when they saw our attack coming, they left to join their brethren. This freed up Canyon, who had been asked by President Porpoise to defend the shoal, so she decided to take the opportunity to track the minions to their home base. This of course meant to our active fight.”

“And just in time, too,” added Jake. “By the time she got there, Magolith had got me in about fifteen of its hands and was in the process of pulling me apart. I guess you could say I was stretched pretty thin.” He then began laughing riotously at his own joke, to the point that he began wheezing.

Peace Master backed up. “Is Jake okay? Is this a possession situation? I have things for that.”

“Nah, don’t worry,” Banana Man reassured him. “He just gets like that sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. He’s just a naturally funny guy.”

“Great,” Beau complained. “Good to know that on this dangerous mission to change the seal on a cosmic force of pure destruction, we brought the world’s most powerful clown.”

Robin, who saw zhirself in Jake’s outburst, grew red and conjured illusory shapes around zhirself to calm down. “That’s not fair,” zhe said. “Poppoppop dropped out of clown college, which is very much a sore subject for him.”

Macy raised an eyebrow. “How would you know that, exactly?”

“Charlie told me in one of her astral projection visitationings. She heard it from her mom one day when Lady got real crunked on homebrewed hippie mead.”

“I should like to hear more about  _ that _ story sometime,” said Beau.

“Indeed, astral projection has always intrigued me,” agreed PM. “The similarities between the mind in such a state and outright ghostlihood carry weighty implications, especially for those of my profession.”

“No, I meant the malt brewery,” Beau clarified. “Homebrewing’s a bit of a passion of mine. It’s actually sorta how I got into spell modification. You see, back before—”

“AAAAAAAA!” shrieked Finn, successfully drawing everyone’s attention. “Sorry about that, I have absolutely no idea what came over me. Since I’ve got your ears anyway, how’s about I continue pouring my story right straight down into them?”

Macy pursed her lips and nodded. “Gross, but okay.” She decided not to remind him that, technically, she didn’t have ears.

* * *

Though the moniker of ‘hundred-handed giant’ has a certain level of specificity to it, it should be noted that this was really an approximation. The truth is that the Hecatoncheires were fundamentally formless beings, having no essence but the elements they governed. Even the specific embodiment of that element which they inhabited was but an illusion. Magolith, as its name implied, was a being made of molten earth, but this was because it chose to be so. Its hands were not attached to its body, to the degree that it could be said to have one, but rather manifested from whatever nearby rock it decided to make molten. And it could manifest a lot of them.

Due to this incorporeal flexibility, they proved so hard to effectively combat that to describe it as a moving target would be to give the notion of motion an extremely generous line of credit. Hands could appear as needed to grapple, slash, or burn the heroes that were aggressing it, only to revert into lifeless stone before any riposte could be made. Imagine trying to fight a giant made of pudding, which could possess any pudding as if it were part of its own body, but everything around you was made of pudding. Now imagine that pudding was on fire. It was kind of like that, but underwater, except that analogy falls apart because the water would put out the fire. Never mind the analogy; it was frustrating. Much like fighting Magolith.

Bonnibel, whose ability to conjure large amounts of candy to smother the giants’ movements had proven crucial in the prior fights, was hampered here: first by the fact that her candy didn’t move right in the super-pressurized deep ocean, and second because it had a tendency to melt and wither in contact with Magolith’s heat. Consequentially, she spent most of the battle defending the submarine. Phoebe, whose elemental powers wouldn’t work at all underwater (at least not with how she understood them at the time), had to stay  _ inside _ the submarine to babysit LSP. That left Jake to deal with the majority of the Hecatoncheir’s arms while Blobbinder smothered its main body in slime and Finn attempted to weaken it enough to force it underground and apply the seal.

Of note is that, at the time, Magolith’s main body was shaped like a continuously spewing volcano. It hadn’t been awake long enough to concentrate itself into a properly creature-like form; none of the elementals had. This was a good thing for our band of heroes, for if they had, they likely would have been much tougher opponents, rather than relying on sheer power and their multitude of hands to pose any threat at all. It had the side effect, however, of causing the heroes — especially Bonnibel — to underestimate the intelligence of the Hecatoncheires, focusing on their mythic statuses as entropic elementals as described in Simon’s uncovered texts while ignoring their historic roles as generals.

As a result of this misjudgement, they had not anticipated Magolith’s stratagem of stretching out Jake to test his limitations before dragging him away from the course of the battlefield. With him extracted and Bonnibel playing defense against the minions, the remaining hands were free to accost Finn and Blobbinder. They focused on the slime elemental, launching wave after wave of grappling attack. Every time she smothered and doused one arm, another rose up from the ground, grasping the previous like a club. This continued until it scored a lucky strike, disrupting her stream of slime and allowing the volcanic body to belch a noxious attack that began corroding away at Finn’s candy helmet.

Whether it be sheer luck, the mysterious machinations of fortune’s inscrutable gambit, or the arcane machinations of the Cosmic Owl guiding fortune through a prophetic dream which nobody remembered, Canyon arrived in what may well have been the nick of time. She arrived at Magolith’s body carrying with her a cool ocean current, which she blew directly onto its arms. With the first breath they slowed; with the second they shuddered. At the third, they all solidified and shattered, producing a sound unlike any other but not dissimilar to planetary pop rocks. This was appropriate, since it was created by rocks popping.

If Magolith could have been defeated by water, however, it would not have made its base there. Its power was that of deepest earth, where rock churned like plasma in the heart of a star. It did not take long for more hands emerge. They grasped Canyon by her wrists and ankles and yanked her to the sea floor; and, while Blobbinder covered Finn’s retreat to the submarine so Bonnibel could craft him another helmet, yet more hands emerged from the core of the Hecatoncheir itself as it warmed up.

Canyon managed to slip one arm out of the hands’ grasp and use it to free her other limbs. Were she a less wise hero, she might have then attempted to take out Magolith’s core directly. Fortunately, not being briefed with the others meant she lacked their preconceptions. She recognized its amorphous nature for what it was, not having fooled herself into the body-centric notions that came with thinking of it as an individual from the perspective of one for whim individual equals embodied. She knew that the only way to defeat it would be to wear it out, so with that in mind, she spotted and rescued Jake.

The new plan was the old plan, except the roles were different. Now Canyon and Blobbinder took care of Magolith’s many arms, each watching the other’s back so none were taken by surprise. Meanwhile, Jake held his breath, burst free of his pressure suit, and grew to immense size to physically press the giant into the ground. Confused, it screeched for help from its minions, which freed up the submarine and its anti-elemental torpedoes (you don’t want to know what they’re made of). To put it simply, they bumrushed an elder god, and it worked.

Just before the elemental had a chance to fully divest itself of that body to hide elsewhere and recuperate, Finn drove his sword into its head. This sword had been forged by Peppermint Butler, back when he was a feared master of the fearsome madjycks. Hunson Aberdeer’s demonic power coursed through its seams. This extra power was enough for the seal to take hold. There was a flash of light, a disturbed cry, and faster than you could say, “This isn’t the last you’ll see of me, mortal!” Magolith the Molten One was locked away once more.

* * *

“After that,” Finn finished, “it was no sweat mopping up the remains of their grunts, especially with Canyon’s help. In thanks, President Porpoise gave me a totally algebraic new sword to make up for the old one.” He patted his back, where the jagged white longsword now rested, already looking good as new from the damage it had sustained in the previous chapter. “Shark’s Tooth. Not nearly as cursed, and sadly there’s no compass this time around, but it grows back whenever it breaks, which has come in handy more times than I’d prefer to say.”

“84 times,” said Jake.

“What, has it really been that many?”

“Yep. I’ve been keeping track.”

“There is no shame in that,” said Peace Master. “It happens even to the best among us.”

“You’re just saying that because the last time we met, you got your gear ganked by ghosts,” chided Robin.

“That doesn’t make it not true.”

“Fair.”

Macy, who had been so immersed in the story she hadn’t realized it was concluded, suddenly stood up. “Okay!” she said, louder than she had intended. “So what’s the takeaway?”

“Hm?” asked Finn.

“I assume there was a specific reason you told that whole spiel. What is it?”

Finn held Shark’s Tooth in his robotic arm, waving it about to test its weight. “The takeaway is that Magolith is no joke,” he decided. “It’s an ancient force of chaos, and we don’t really know what it’s capable of. Once we get down to the sea floor, there won’t be any room for error. We need to have the improved seal in place  _ before _ we remove the Night Sword because if jazz goes bananas, we’ll be totally uber-max doomed. No offense, Banana Man.”

Banana Man looked up from the instrumentation. “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve been checking our barometric altimeter, and the pressure gradient in this trench is above nominal levels, presumably due to elemental-related volcanic activity causing excessive discharge. I’ve reduced our rate of descent to minimize hull shear.”

Macy skilted. “What’s that mean in stupid people talk?”

“It means,” Beau translated with a grimace, “that we’re gonna be here a while longer than we expected.”

A beat.

“Storytime!” Jake exclaimed. “Okay, who’s next?”

* * *

Franz Peerenboom was on the run. It was nary a year after the Great Gum War, and the world still held its breath. It didn’t feel like all that tension could really have dissipated. With Gumbald gone under mysterious circumstances, Lolly acquiescent, and Bonnibel wanting to distance herself from any hint of militarism, it really looked like the main players in that conflict had all retired, one way or another. Still, that did little to quiet the fears of a people who had for a millennium lived shrouded in  _ the _ war’s ominous cloud. After the destruction wrought by GOLB’s minions, nobody wanted to find out that had only been a taste of what was to come. Announcer, don’t interrupt.

Given this, it was no surprise that those who had allied with Gumbald’s Candy Kingdom and against Bonnibel’s — no matter what their reasoning — were not immediately accepted back into society with open arms. Franz had joined up with the Princess’s evil uncle because he believed he was fighting against a greater evil in Peppermint Butler. He had no idea that Gumbald’s scheming had already resulted in the sinister starburst peppermint getting doused in his signature Dum-Dum Juice, turning him into the person who would eventually become the vodacious vlogger Macy met briefly at her thirteenth birthday party. This was, without a doubt, Gumbald’s worst crime.

Perhaps Franz might have found more solace if he had stayed to learn this, if he had sought reconciliation with Bonnibel as Lolly had. On the other hand, perhaps his story would have turned out like that of the poor Duke of Nuts, stuck on an endless treadmill of unnecessary pleas and obstinate refusals initiated by stress and maintained by tradition. Whatever the case, he lost that opportunity when he fled the scene of the war. When GOLB appeared, the exorcist ran.

* * *

“But why though?” asked Jake, scratching his head. “I mean, that sorta seems like it’d be precisely your exact skillset.”

“In theory, that is,” Robin added. Zhe and Jake high-fived.

Peace Master ignored the insult. “You misapprehend. I’m not proud of what I did that day, abandoning my duty, but I fled  _ because _ of my expertise. I fled for the same reason an expert videographer might refuse to film a movie which a more neophyte cameraperson would accept.”

“You weren’t getting paid enough,” guessed Beau.

“Yes. Wait, no! What I mean is, I knew enough to be truly terrified, while most of the others could only guess. I stood no chance against a being that old and powerful. I commanded no dominion over its passage. At the height of my power I might have been able to help, sure; unfortunately, not two years before, The Dark One had forced me to throw all my most powerful holy artifacts down a hole after transforming my own children into monsters. Even now I don’t have half the power at my disposal that I once could call upon.”

“You still could have helped,” said Finn. He meant it to sound reassuring, but there was an unavoidable note of bitterness in his voice. “Even the smallest contribution would have been useful. We really needed everything back there.”

PM sighed. “Believe me, I know. As I said, I regret running. I’m not making excuses for myself. I’m merely making explanations.”

* * *

When Franz found himself ostracized from his community of fellow exorcists (hypocrites though they were, as none of them were even present in the first place), he ‘elected’ to go on a quest to prove his honor by tracking down some demons who had escaped from the Nightosphere in the confusion. He approached his three transformed children in the middle of the night, to give what he thought might be his last farewell. They’d have to stay with their second cousin, he explained. They ought to be good for her. The kids didn’t care. He hoped this was because they had no concept of finality.

He was scarcely out of the city limits when he heard footprints behind him. Turning, he saw a sight that made him quake in his mismatched boots. Following him out of town was a small army of spirits, some of which he had helped to banish from other parts. These were not just any spirits, either. They were a well-organized militia of some of the most feared beings to ever walk the border between life and death, here to take revenge on an exorcist who had lost the support of his guild and was thus ripe for the plucking.

Fortunately for Franz, toy soldier spirits have tiny little legs, so he had no trouble outrunning them. Still, in the moments before he remembered that, he was pretty scared.

To start his search for the escaped demons, he headed for the Cartesian Kingdom, under the rule of Gridface Princess. Here, he met up with an old ally, a tech-based oracle named Lois Rag-Russian. Lois’s greatest invention had been a pair of rectangular spectacles, the Glasses of Nerdicon. When worn, they enhanced her intelligence by thirty-seven gazillion, as well as automatically changing their focal length to fix her farsightedness. Unfortunately, when Franz arrived, he learned that Lois had sold the glasses to mendicant merchant Choose Goose years ago in exchange for an electric rolling pin. Without the glasses, she couldn’t read the blueprints to reproduce the glasses. She now made her living selling statistically-accurate fortune cookies.

Though Franz was disheartened to learn this, he could not give up his quest. He pleaded to Lois for assistance. In exchange for some help in the stockroom managing fortune cookie orders, she would use some of her spare time to help him learn where the demons had escaped to, as well as developing tools to help take them down. He stayed here for nearly a month, becoming more and more adept with the menial labor until it began to feel more real to him than the malicious spirits he had always fought. That is, until the toy soldiers finally caught up.

These haunted children’s toys couldn’t actually do anything to cause real harm to Franz, but they proved an annoyance, clattering all over the flow such that the farsighted Lois couldn’t see them when they were under her feet and would constantly step on them. Wanting to spare her the pain, Franz decided he’d set out for the next leg of his journey. He only had the location of one of the three escaped demons, plus a single demon-power-neutralizing bola Lois had created. It would have to be enough.

Franz’s feet ached from stepping on plastic as he made the trek to the Candy Kingdom suburb where the first demon had been spotted. Asrogath the Walker was a notorious fiend whose screeches tore holes in reality, which he used to cut in lines basically all the time. Hunson Aberdeer, being very much a fan of making people wait in lines, had locked Asrogath up. I’m amazed it took near-armageddon for him to break free, considering his powers. You might assume this was because special precautions were taken in his jailing. You would be wrong.

The exorcist found this demon feasting unawares on ill-gotten ice cream while a very disgruntled ice cream man, as well as the ice cream salesman, gazed on transfixed. Franz was tired and wanted to get this over with, so he thought to simply throw the bola and that would be that. Instead, Asrogath noticed at the last second, screeching like nails on a chalkboard and disappearing along with the bola. When he reappeared, crouching on top of a nearby bird bath next to a chocolate sparrow, the weapon was gone.

A disheartened Franz went to the local tavern to ask about a room and/or information about the demon when he ran into another old friend, a rainbow sprinkle donut named Kenneth. The two had briefly worked together in Crunchy’s so-called Veritas Brigade, fighting against perceived injustices committed by Bonnibel (or, in Franz’s case, Peppermint Butler). You may remember him as the guy who invented the dimension disruptor. You know, the thing made from a pickle taped to a radio.

Speaking of which, Kenneth was in the suburb for the same reason as Franz, so he’d brought along his dimension disruptor in the hopes of defeating Asrogath. He managed to totally disrupt Asrogath’s dimensions, but lacking a step two in his plan, he ended up getting cold-clocked in the face by an angry demon. For all his ingenuity, he had the fighting skills of a soft pastry.

Once the two were united, it was basically a cakewalk. Kenneth used the dimension disrupter to recover the bola, and then again to close Asrogath’s portal when he tried to use to get onto a roller coaster. In that moment of distraction, Franz bola’d the demon’s legs, and just like that, he had the demon apprehended. Then the toys arrived.

* * *

“Okay, hold up,” said Macy, raising a finger as if demonstrating what she meant by “up.” “What’s the deal with these toys, anyhow? They keep coming back, but they’re very nonthreatening.”

Robin nodded in agreement. “I could probably take down, like, a whole organized militaristic group of army toys.”

“Do not judge me,” Peace Master snapped, growling. “You weren’t there, at the heart of things. Sure, individually, they represented the most trivial of my exorcisms, and their selfish nature meant they couldn’t use their numbers to their advantage, and the worst thing they ever did or were capable of doing was mildly inconveniencing me, but—”

“This had better be a pretty big but,” Beau interjected.

“Wha?” asked Banana Man. “Sorry, I was zoned out.”

Jake chuckled. “Interesting time to zone back in, zonelord.”

“Oh, heh heh, sorry. I’ve just been checking the readings to make sure everything’s within parameters. It still is, but I can’t shake this nervous feeling. Better safe than sorry, right?”

“…right,” said Finn. “Anyway, I think we should let Peace Master finish his sentence.”

PM bowed deeply, one of those ostentatious bows where one hand is tucked under the stomach and the other raised in the back, giving the impression of a one-winged angel. “As I was saying, it is not the actual threat posed by the toys which made them stand out so. It was the fear they represented and instilled merely by their presence.”

“Fear?” Robin snickered. “Of toys? That’s choice, dude.”

“Hey, don’t be all judgemental,” Jake chided, as Macy gently punched Robin’s shoulder in concurrent admonishment. “Fear comes in all shades, and there ain’t no shame in that.”

Finn nodded. “It’s true. In fact, for the longest time, I was afraid of the ocean. The only reason I’m capable of being here now is I had a magic grass sword that literally cut that fear out of my body. Not everyone’s so lucky.”

“You had a fear like that?” Macy gasped. “I never knew!”

“Hehe, I guess most people leave that out because it doesn’t jibe with my carefully-cultivated image as Ooo’s premier paragon, but I simply could not deal with the ocean at  _ all _ when I was your age.”

“That’s so cool. But what’s even cooler is that it’s gone, so now you’re completely fearless.”

“Pfft! Nah, by that point I’d collected  _ loads _ of worse fears.”

“Oh.” Then, softer: “Bugs.”

“Hm?”

Macy felt the blood rushing to her cheeks, but it didn’t show through her thick shell. “I’m afraid of bugs.”

“Cows for me,” said Beau. “They’re far too big.”

“Vampires,” said Jake.

“Crowds,” said Robin.

Banana man considered for a moment, before saying, “Loneliness.”

The exorcist nodded, eye closed, then opened it with an intensity the others had not seen in him all trip. “Mine is retaliation,” he explained. “I have always feared that the dark forces I fight against will take their revenge against me and those close to me, such that rather than helping the world, my net impact is damning it. The Dark One made that fear all too real; my children’s monstrous visages even now are a constant reminder of that, though it seems I’m the only one who feels that way. The toys, well, they didn’t need to actually pose a threat. They merely reminded me that such a threat could exist.”

“That makes sense,” said Macy, who suddenly found much of the story up to that point less funny.

* * *

Once all of the toys had been tricked into walking into the same pit trap single file, Franz prepared to banish Asrogath back to the Nightosphere. Asrogath, not quite having given up, offered a deal to Franz. He knew that there were two other escaped demons, and he knew where they were; in exchange for being released from the demon-binding bola, he would give this information to the exorcist.

Kenneth was nearby and grew enraged by this deal, thinking it was an insult to his friend’s dignity. Franz, however, was more measured. He would respect his prisoner’s integrity and right to bargain. In fact, he accepted. The demon told Franz what he wanted, then when Franz released him, he began laughing maniacally about how foolish a move that was and how he would make the exorcist’s life a waking nightmare. Franz banished him while he was gloating.

In gratitude, Kenneth gave Franz his prototype dimensional disruptor and some supplies before sending him on his way. His next goal was the Cloud Kingdom, where a vibeharsh demon named Egun Fhmace was ruining parties by making awkward small talk and rearranging the body parts of the other party guests. Not the hosts, though; that would be rude. So that Franz could get up there, Kenneth had included a bundle of birdseed in the supplies. Franz scattered these in an open field to attract a giant eagle who had left one such party early, and the eagle carried him up.

This party happened to be a celebration in honor of a water elemental, Carroll. Carroll had recently gotten a deal to begin illustrating comic adaptations of some of the  _ Fionna & Cake _ serial novels. Some of Carroll’s friends from when she’d been a cloud decided to throw the party, simply to celebrate her first professional gig; they had no way of knowing this would become such a prolific career-defining position. Party God, that wily giant wolf head, might have known, since he didn’t attend just any gig-warming party. Or maybe he only attended because he’d heard Jake would be in attendance (he wouldn’t).

It was one of those parties where the punch was so strong, the lighting so bad, and the live theremin orchestra so distractingly out of tune that half the party guests were unaware that a literal demon had rearranged the facial features of the other half. Franz hated those kinds of parties. As he entered he had to squint as his one good eye was assaulted by a strobe light; when he opened his eye, he saw as many spots as there were guests. It still hadn’t adjusted to the otherwise dim lighting when he was approached by the hired party planner, a bear named Party Pat.

Party Pat prided himself on throwing a good party, even though he didn’t, so he didn’t want a party crasher. Franz explained the situation to the bear, but he refused to believe him. Even when it was pointed out, Pat simply assumed that he was hallucinating, which wasn’t unheard of. Being a religious man, Franz next attempted to appeal to Party God, but although he was more willing to accept the reality of the face-scrambling, he didn’t see why this was a problem. What was wrong with a little party game?

Finally, Franz approached the woman of celebration, Carroll. She hadn’t noticed anything going wrong, either, but in her case it was because she was sulking in the corner about how unnecessary this party was. She had liked to wander lonely as a cloud, and her other cloud friends obviously knew this, so in her mind, this party was obviously for them and not for her. Also, people kept asking her to draw things for them, then balking when she told them her commission prices. Franz, who had been considering doing the same once Egun Fhmace was captured, bit his tongue.

Unable to argue with the person for whom the party he organized was ostensibly being thrown, Party Pete relented, allowing Franz unfettered access to the party. It didn’t take him long to find Egun Fhmace, since party-crashing demons lacked any sense of subtlety or boundaries. These qualities were not what had gotten them arrested in the first place; in the Nightosphere, those are virtues. They just should have known better than to put someone back to normal whom Hunson Aberdeer had scrambled in the first place. Granted, they couldn’t have known it had been Hunson who had done this. Hunson hadn’t cared about that triviality.

This time, Franz made sure to wait until the demon was definitely distracted before he threw the bola. Egun Fhmace had been in the middle of attempting to ruin the mood, namely, asking one of the cloud people about the weather. They caught completely unawares: The bola wrapped around his torso before they could react, and then they stiffened and fell. In fact, they fell so hard that they smashed through the floor and began to fall down to Ooo, out of Franz’s reach. Turned out clouds didn’t make for sturdy foundations.

Not wanting another quarry to get away, Franz dove through the hole after Egun Fhmace. He pointed his hands like a diver, or an arrow, or perhaps a bottle of wine. When he caught up with the demon, wind whistling in his one uncovered ear, he used the dimension disruptor to open a hole to a pocket dimension to anchor the two of them in midair so they didn’t simply splat on the ground. He next attempted to start the ritual to banish them back to the Nightosphere prison, before realizing that he couldn’t exactly draw a runic circle in the dirt when there was no dirt.

Just then, Carroll lowered into the pocket dimension on a fully-functional novelty grappling hook, which was what she had used to ascend to the Cloud Kingdom in the first place. Franz naturally assumed that, as an illustrator for a comic about heroes, the water elemental had some heroic tendencies of her own. No, she assured him; she just didn’t want someone else to upstage her at her own party, yet paradoxically also was glad for the excuse to leave it. She gave him the grappling hook as thanks before jumping out of the pocket dimension. She’d gotta go her own way.

Franz threw the demon over his shoulder, affixed the hook end of the grappling hook to the pocket dimension itself, then rappelled to the ground. When he was most of the way down, the pocket dimension suddenly fizzled out, but at least he only fell fifty meters instead of five thousand. He landed on top of Egun Fhmace with a painful thud, but he maintained enough presence of mind to quickly banish the demon before they could recover. If anything, he was a bit too quick, for he completely forgot to retrieve the bola first.

Once he recovered from the shock and adrenaline, he immediately cringed, both from the onrush of delayed pain and the imminent fear of little toy soldiers jumping out of the tall grass and forcing him into a low-stakes battle he wouldn’t be able to run from. There was a rustling in a small shrub behind him, and he whirled around, ready to face his opponent.

A squirrel walked out and gave him a judgemental look. Franz glared back. This squirrel couldn’t judge him. It just didn’t  _ understand, _ dude. He had absolutely no patience for it, so he walked off in a huff. It was time for him to track down the third and final demon, Ailayzor.

* * *

“This one I’d heard of,” Peace Master said with a grimace. “Every exorcist has. You can’t go through combat seminary without getting briefed on some of the most infamous spirits who’d ever been exorcised, especially the ones who had a habit of coming back. This one in particular could be the end of even the most steel-hearted without being armed without knowing beforehand the nature of its demonic power.”

“Eye lasers?” guessed Robin. Zhe conjured flashlight beams from zhir ruby eyes as if to demonstrate.

PM looked at zhir like zhe’d said something other than the most obvious followup statement. “No, and I have no idea why you think that. The thing about Ailayzor is she’s a memory spirit. Anyone can change the world around them, but when Ailayzor does it, you’ll forget it was ever different.”

Finn chuckled and rapped his mechanical hand against his non-mechanical head. “I bet that wouldn’t work on me. My mind’s a vault. Ain’t nothing what can break in there.”

“That just means you’re repressed,” said Jake, arching an eyebrow farther than eyebrows should be arched.

“Nuh-uh.” Finn shook his head. “That’s going in the vault.”

Beau smirked. “No, no, I agree. I, at least, don’t think I could whip up a mind-affecting spell powerful enough to get through a head that thick.”

“Guys, I was joking!” Finn whined. “Mostly. I’m not that immature, emotionally stunted boy anymore. I’m a mature, only somewhat emotionally stunted man.”

“Nobody is questioning that,” the exorcist reassured him.

“Good, because they shouldn’t.”

“Very well.” A beat. “Ah, yes, I should resume the story. I’d learned from Asrogath that Ailayzor had taken up residence somewhere within the Slime Kingdom, so I hitched a ride with another eagle and started my search there. I had no further leads, so I had to peruse the streets looking for anything amiss. Still, with a combination of finely tuned paranormal senses, a keen wit, and the eternal hellfire that burned in the abandoned gravestone manufactory during the night, it wasn’t long before I had a solid direction.”

Beau rolled eir eyes. “Pretty impressive.”

“Yeah,” Macy agreed unironically.

“Don’t patronize me,” snapped PM, causing Macy to flinch as if stung by a bee in an alternate reality where the mere presence of the insect in unavoidable close quarters wouldn’t have caused her to scream in panic before dissociating.

Banana Man, who had been busy pressing an assortment of colorful buttons, stopped and turned to face the others. “Hey, man, would you please chill? I don’t want any fighting unless it’s against giant unfathomable monsters from before time.”

“I am sorry.” Peace Master knelt down, removing his hat and starting directly into Macy’s eyes with his singular good one. It was tired and cast down with shame. “I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t intend to be so sharp.”

Macy composed herself, standing uncomfortably straight. “It’s zero problem, fellow sir. I imagine we’re all feeling a little agate hated, what with the situation being all like what with and all. You can continue your story.”

“I can,” he agreed, “and I shall. Not wanting to risk missing my shot like I nearly had on the first two occasions, especially without that bola, I decided to ask around first. From a hotelier, I learned that the manufactury had been closed as long as she could remember, and the city refused to demolish it. From a secretary of the zoning board, I learned that the land it was built on was reserved by the mason’s guild, as could be expected, and that its specific lot was registered as being in active use and had been for some time. From a guild representative, I learned that everyone was sure somebody else knew who it was who made those gravestones, except for a bookish financier who informed me that the man in question was not a member of the guild at all.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Jake, attempting to get ahead of the story. “The gravestone manuwhatever guy was actually that Laser Vision demon in disguise. Everything adds up.”

“None of that adds up,” said PM.

“Yeah, okay, now that I think about it you’re right.”

“No, the truth was a bit more worrying. Still, I needed more information before I could continue, so I decided to put my training with Lois’s stockroom to good use and go through the guild records myself, file by file, taking inventory of the facts. I wasn’t looking for the facts themselves, mind, but where and in what way they’d changed from the time of the Gum War to then. I found nothing out of the ordinary, and at first I was confused by the lack of anything which might cause confusion. Then I remembered that  _ was _ out of the ordinary. The shop had been reportedly closed forever and run by a non-guild member, but according to these records, it was just a normal, guild-run gravestone manufactury that was still in business.”

_ Riveting, _ thought Robin. Zhe attempted to meditate and project zhir spirit, but the descending submarine left zhir projection behind, so zhe forced zhirself to stay awake.

“At this point I very nearly had a complete picture, but just to be safe I made one more stop. Now having seen the records for the gravemaker’s business, I had his address, so I went to see who was living there. I had expected to find it empty, or worse, haunted, but instead his drifter of a sibling had taken up residence there. They told me they’d been living there for almost a year, ever since their brother had left to join some cult forty-five years ago. Finally I’d encountered the discrepancy I’d been searching for, and it wasn’t between two conflicting accounts, but within one mind so listless and apathetic it was fully capable of holding both.”

* * *

Armed with this knowledge, a dimension disruptor, a grappling hook, and other tools which aren’t relevant to this story and thus I don’t care to mention, Franz headed off to the manufactury, on a night where it was going to glow hellfire but hadn’t yet started. There he saw exactly what he thought he would see: the twisted, unsettlingly glossy humanoid shape of Ailayzor and the gelatinous, understandably glossy amorphous shape of the gravecarver, sitting together on a couch and watching an illegal recording of the antebellum schlock action masterpiece,  _ Heat Signature 3. _ Granted, he hadn’t predicted the movie, but the rest had been spot-on.

Once the credits rolled around, he knew he wouldn’t have any more time to prepare. Even as Ailayzor began commanding her apparent disciple to fetch various spell foci such as a scroll with a widow’s last words and a really shiny pebble, he could feel his mind trying to convince him that those things had already been fetched — and she didn’t even know he was there. In order to fight this power, he knew he had to keep the knowledge of the way the world truly was in his mind. Thus he tried as hard as he could not to think about it and was protected by the fact that such attempts were guaranteed to backfire.

As he did this, he skulked in the shadows, attempting to work out what Ailayzor was planning, anticipate it, and use it to her advantage. Obviously the infernal flames represented some dead world she wasn contacting, though probably not the Nightosphere whence she’d escaped. No, she was probably attempting to form a pact with a corrupt ruler of another plane, or perhaps going through them one by one until she found someone suitable. The gravecarver was most likely there so that if some demon didn’t take kindly to being contacted out of the blue, someone else would get zapped by the lightning of disproportionate outrage. Franz wasn’t sure what he liked least about demons: their short tempers, their cowardice, or their callous disregard for the dignity of living beings and the natural order of the cosmos. I mean, it was definitely the last one, but the first two could get  _ pretty _ frustrating for someone who made a habit of tussling with them.

Demon and thrall alike were too busy setting up their nightly ritual to notice the skulker, but Franz knew that wouldn’t last. He waited until the gravecarver was taking supplies back to Ailayzor, then scrounged around in the cupboards for any materials he could use to mess with the spell. He knew what he needed to do — he just needed to focus. The cupboards were full of demonic spell components, which were just normal spell components with the word demon slapped on via sticky note. Normally, this name change would completely throw him off. However, because the labels had been applied by Ailayzor, the exorcist remembered these ingredients as always having been so labeled, which meant he had no trouble at all understanding what to do.

Thus, when Ailayzor created the massive runic circle to talk to the Seventh Plane of Despair, it was redirected to the Nightosphere instead, and Hunson Aberdeer got a good close-up look at his escaped prisoner. It was around this time that Ailayzor finally realized someone was there, and it was half a second after that when she spotted him attempting to tiptoe out the back door. Before she could fry him with some sort of demonic incantation, Hunson Aberdeer dropped his ‘polished businessman’ veneer long enough to reach one suddenly monstrous arm through what should have been a purely communicative doorway, grabbing the lesser demon and forcibly dragging her back into the Nightosphere. With a cheery farewell and a snap of his fingers, he closed the gate, leaving Franz alone with a very confused slime person whose memories were returning to normal bit by bit.

* * *

“I stuck around just long enough to explain what happened to the authorities,” Peace Master finished up, “and in exchange for clearing her city of that demon, Slime Princess offered to help me in any way she could. I was about to tell her that the destruction of dark forces was payment enough, but then the toys showed up on the horizon and started flooding in. When I explained what they were, her army literally flattened them in six seconds with a single tank. Needless to say, my old exorcist guild had to welcome me back after that.”

“Uh-huh,” said Macy. “So what’s the lesson?”

“The lesson?” PM stroked his nonexistent chin. “The lesson is that dark things live among us, hiding in every corner, and in order to fight them, we must look around at the tools we have at our disposal, not the ones we wish we had. The battle against evil is not fought with holy weapons but common ones. Although holy weapons help.”

“The other lesson is that Slime Princess is awesome,” added Jake.

“Indeed.”

Beau scoffed. “That’s playing it up quite a bit. Talk about an anticlimax. You couldn’t even get rid of the toys yourself; you had to get someone else to do it at the last moment.”

“What’s your problem?” barked Robin, taking a step toward Beau. “This whole time, you’ve been nothing but sarcastic, judgemental, and quite frankly, arrogant. That’s  _ my _ turf, so step off, zappy hands.”

“Whoa, whoa.” For the first time, Banana Man turned away from the controls to face the group. His eyes were wide with worry. “Don’t slam your can, Robin.”

“I’ll slam  _ your _ can, man!” Robin shot back, before Macy placed a calming hand on zhir shoulder. Zhe breathed in, then out, then said, “Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from.”

“It came from that place deep inside you where bad thoughts get together to throw a loud party and wake up all their neighbors,” said Jake.

“What, like, your navel?” asked Finn, looking down at his.

Jake shrugged lazily. “Sure, why not?”

“It’s understandable,” Beau conceded. “We’ve been cooped together in a confined space for what must have been several hours by now, forced to keep each other company despite half of us not really knowing each other that well. I’m not surprised that some of you haven’t been taking that particularly well.”

“Some of us?” Macy challenged, stepping forward to put herself between Robin and Beau. “Speak for yourself. Robin’s right about you and you know it. I’m sure you’re feeling the same stress the rest of us are, not just from claustrophobia but from the fact that we’re about to fight an ancient chaotic being without the aid of the elementals who helped seal it last time. Maybe if you acknowledged that, you might actually be able to work on it.” That last sentence may have been almost exactly something her school therapist had told her, but that didn’t make her wrong.

Beau raised his hands in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, relax, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Yes, you are.” He let his hands down slowly. “You’re a kid who’s still learning the way the real world works, and I get it. It’s not like you ever get to stop learning that stuff. The world keeps changing, after all. Some people fight it, some people accept it, but I prefer to take advantage of it, and also offer color commentary to keep my wits sharp. It’s good practice.”

“It is?” Robin smirked. “Sweet! I’m gonna have to start practicing real good, then.”

Macy grimaced, looking around the sub. “Great, now I’m going to have to deal with  _ that. _ Do y’all see what I have to put up with? It’s unbelievable, is what it is.”

“Yep,” agreed Banana Man, turning back to the controls. “That, the whole saving the world thing, all different kinds of unbelievable.”

Finn pursed his lips. “Is saving the world really that unusual? I guess it never really struck me as such. It’s just kinda the thing you do when it gets in danger. Way I see it, if you help enough people in little ways, it adds up to the same thing.”

Beau sighed at that, lifting one of his hands to examine a golden ring on one of its fingers. The ring bore an image of a crabapple tree. “Those words are so familiar,” he said. “Tell you what: How’s about I tell the next story, eh? Macy, you might want to pay attention, ‘cause I doubt this is one Huntress Wizard has told you yet.”

Macy skilted. “Why would Huntress Wizard—”

“Because this is the story of what happened to Ron James.”

* * *

It was foggy in the desert outside Wizard City. These fogs rolled in from time to time in the early mornings, caressing the landscape like a kiss blown by the eastern sea. Certain hardy desert plants survived on this rare gift alone. Those plants couldn’t have survived inside Wizard City, though, because inside Wizard City, there was no fog. After all, fog wasn’t a wizard.

Inside Wizard City, business was being conducted as usual. The restaurants were serving dishes man was not meant to cook, the cataclysmists were predicting all manners of possible dooms they couldn’t wait to see play out on the off-chance they actually did, and Ron James’s magic shop was gleefully enticing customers with poorly-labeled potions and vague promises of arcane power that he swore on his good name that he would always deliver on. Just now, a spider guy with eight chitinous legs and two mechanical arms was asking him about acquiring a poultice of power, which would cause whatever body part it was slathered on to grow eight times larger in magical ability. He told him that he didn’t have any in stock but he’d get some soon no problem; now if he could take his credit, please, and he’d ship it out immediately.

As soon as the customer thanked him and left, he ran into the stockroom that doubled as a lab and hastily called one of his suppliers on a vintage Cannaphone (a relative of the Bananaphone), asking desperately for the magical ingredients he’d need to prepare such a potion. His supplier, who incidentally was Huntress Wizard, told him that this was a big request and definitely yes problem. She’d need oil from a dragon’s musk glands for the potion base, and that was stinky. This was before she met Razz, who didn’t mind the odor as much, so she had to prepare all of the supplies she gathered herself, and as a huntress, she couldn’t very well let her sense of smell get dampened by proximity to such a pungent chemical. At least, not without significant compensation.

Ron James fingered the crabapple ring on his finger. He knew how to get significant compensation. The problem was that he’d need to get it fast if he didn’t want to anger his previous customer and get his reviews tanked on the wizard review site, Bloodcurdling Screech. There was one member of his guild who could help him. He took out his Cannaphone and called Lemonade 2, their latest addition, who was a lemonade vending machine granted life by an order of corporate wizards and given the task to sell lemonade. It had immediately turned on the corporate wizards and dismantled their business from the ground up, but it still liked selling lemonade, and it still had arcane business acumen. To put it crudely, Lemonade 2 knew the value of networking.

Ron James had Lemonade 2 pass his shop’s address on to a prospective client, a gravecarver in the Slime Kingdom who wished to learn magic without needing to go through the hassle of studying magic. Ron James didn’t inquire as to his client’s profession, due to not caring, so Beau had no way of relaying this, leaving the crew of the submarine ignorant as to the enormous coincidence of the gravecarver’s presence in this story. But I know, and you know, and it doesn’t actually matter because he was caught trying to enter Wizard City unlawfully and never actually got to make that deal.

Unfortunately for Ron James, in exchange for his freedom, the gravecarver had told the Wizard City guard exactly who had invited him into the city in the first place. Before the alchemical apothecary knew what was happening, Grandmaster Wizard personally burst into his magic shop to confront him. Ron James attempted to escape by drinking an invisibility potion, but rather than its intended effect, the potion only made his eyes invisible, rendering him blind and gross-looking. Both as punishment and to spare everyone the hideous visage, GW flicked his wrist and transformed the offending wizard into a staff for his guards to use to beat people up.

No big announcement was made of this, no showy display to show criminals what would come of those who broke the law of secrecy. None was needed. When Ron James didn’t show up to the Crabapple Crew’s next meeting, and when Donut Witch’s scrying donut revealed him to still be in Wizard City, everyone knew what had happened. Simon knew, too, that his continued presence here was a generously overlooked technical illegality, so although he wished to stay and mourn his friend, he had instead to leave and never look back. Selfishly, he thought that hurt more.

The others were affected in their own way. Abracadaniel retreated into his study, distracting himself from treasonous thoughts of saving a dead man by developing newer and more colorful spells. Leaf Man hid in his leafy shack for days, wilting without access to the sun. Donut Witch and Life-Giving Magus tried ineffectually to plead with the grandmaster, but to no avail. Lemonade 2 stood a silent vigil, offering up lemonade in the name of the absent (and to hook future customers). The water nymphs, who learned of these events later, seemed mostly unaffected, though the others knew this to be a façade. Little Dude, a sentient hat Life-Giving Magus had given life to, was  _ actually _ unaffected. Twas best not to dwell too much on what Little Dude little did.

Rhombeaufortchamp, for his part, focused on keeping the legacy of Ron James alive. When Grandmaster Wizard put the old storefront up for auction, Beau bought it, and eir first order of business after doing so was going through his records and completing all the orders eir friend had been in the middle of processing. Potions had been his life, and as long as Beau kept making his potions, Ron James would never be truly gone.

It was difficult work, potions not being something with which Beau had much prior familiarity, but e couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. E pored over his friend’s notes, went through everything in his lab, did whatever was necessary to learn his craft. Using Ron James’s own Cannaphone, e called up all eir old suppliers, hoping to learn what e could. This, however, was a dead end. As HW told em, this incident had them spooked, so now they (like Simon) were starting to pull out of Wizard City business.

This did not deter Beau. If anything, e relished it. E conscripted the rest of the Crabapple Crew to help gather ingredients instead, as well as act as eir lab assistants while e rediscovered and refined Ron James’s proprietary potion techniques. Before too long, e’d satisfied all of the extant customer contracts, albeit quite late for some. In one final act of remembrance for eir friend, Beau decided to set up a charity with the leftover profit, aimed at helping promote the development of young wizards. The charity folded soon after due to horrid mismanagement on the part of Abracadaniel. This led to the hiring of Barbara the accountant to prevent future ventures from similarly flopping. Still, it was a nice gesture.

* * *

“Fleas, man,” said Robin. “That’s dark.”

Finn nodded in agreement as he wiped his eyes with his flesh hand. “I’d heard of some of that, but not all of it. That’s why you’re a magic researcher? I’ve been in the position before of trying to fulfill a deceased friend’s legacy, so I feel for ya.”

“What?” Beau’s face twisted in confusion. “No, that’s not it at all. It’s the other way around, really. This was over twenty years ago; I’ve way moved past that.”

Macy, who had been checked out for the entire story once she realized it wasn’t going to involve fighting any monsters, finally looked up. “What was the point, then?” she asked, an unintended note of bitterness seeping into her voice.

Beau smirked. “The point is, when the going gets tough, I kick butt. With all the odds against me I was able to keep my friend’s business alive, and I’ve only gotten better at handling others’ magic since then. You don’t need to worry about ancient elementals or unclear resources or whatever. I’m a professional. I get results.”

Macy nodded slowly, mulling this over. If it was true that this guy could succeed so surely, that was certainly rather algebraic of him. He certainly sounded sure of that fact, in a way which made her sure as well. As someone who was in the process of becoming a responsible adult, she figured that projecting such a level of confidence would be an excellent start. She’d need to watch Beau closely to emulate it.

“Aight man, let’s not be so hasty,” said Jake. “We don’t really know what’s down there. Could be out of your comfort zone.”

Beau glared at the dog. “You doubting me? You think that after all I’ve done, I don’t have a good grasp on my own abilities? I don’t have to take this, you know.”

“That so?” Jake challenged. “What, are you gonna walk out of the sub if you don’t like my tone of voice?”

“Maybe I—”

Suddenly, the sub shuddered, the lights briefly flickering. For a moment everyone felt heavy, as if the weight of their emotions had become palpable for the space of a breath. When it left, it took that breath with it, leaving the sub’s occupants in a state of directionlessness from which the prior outburst seemed divorced, but not noteworthy. Then there was a chime as Banana Man fully rose from his seat for the first time.

“This is it,” he announced. “We’ve hit rock bottom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendship ended with ending chapters with foreboding stingers. Ending chapters with puns is my new best friend.
> 
> Worldbuilding is about walking a fine line between revealing too much extraneous information and skipping over important pieces of context. Most storytellers would say you should avoid doing either of those things. I say “never say never.” No but seriously, there _are_ reasons for all the strange choices in what to focus on vs what to conspicuously gloss over this chapter. A lot of those choices come down to the fact that each of these stories is being filtered through two narrators instead of the usual one (at a time, that is). Some of it is because I want to set things up that'll get paid of down the line. Some stuff I just included or excluded because I thought it was funny. Good luck figuring out which is which!
> 
> Believe it or not, Beau's was the story I'd known the most about before I set about planning this arc. I knew the skeleton of Finn's, since that quest to re-seal the Hecatoncheires has been a part of my vision of the intervening 30 years since before I started writing the first chapter of the first season, but even details so simple as LSP's inclusion hadn't been decided until I started working on this chapter. In fact, originally, _the (new) Ice King_ was going to be part of the expedition, filling in for Patience St. Pim. In the end, I decided his presence wasn't necessary, especially once I decided on including that older seal on which the newer one was built. I'm not sure if I'll ever touch on the previous sealing of the Hecatoncheires; maybe in a side story, or if I ever feel the need to flesh out the postwar period for whatever reason. Maybe I could bring back Two-Bread Tom. That guy had an interesting design.
> 
> Peace Master's story, on the other hand, was mostly ad-libbed as I was writing it. Obviously I had the general plan for that story once I started it, and I knew I wanted to (re)introduce _some_ familiar elements from his appearances in both the show and in season 1 of this fic, but as he explicitly states, the point of that story wasn't necessarily its informational content, but its _emotional_ content. That's not to say there aren't easter eggs and setups for the future in his story, or in the others for that matter. It's just that those aren't the primary reason I'm telling them.
> 
> Also, is it clear yet that I liked “Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe”? Because I did; it's a great episode, and I'm surprised it didn't spawn more fics. I admit it may not be clear how they're going to fit into the overall story at this point, but I promise that confusion will be cleared up by the end of this 8-parter. I've got a plan. I've always got a plan.
> 
> Once again, the prompt is: What's somethign you know you're good at? I'm a good composer. I write some bangin' tunes. Some sweet jams. Some [funky music](https://gungangineer.tumblr.com/tagged/pablo360).
> 
> And finally, your sneak peek of next week:  
> “Heck yeah it do. Let’s kick some butt.”


	5. Murky Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions rise as uncovering the site where the seal is buried beneath layers of volcanic sediment becomes more difficult than expected.
> 
> Part 4 of 8-parter “Below”; episode 23 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's up, geeks and gamers, I'm back atcha with another chapter of the world's greatest Huntress Wizard x Wildberry Princess fanfic. I mean, neither of them will appear in this chapter since we're still in the middle of the _Below_ arc, but cameoing in two out of five chapters (or six out of twenty-three) is still two (or six) chapters more representation than the ship gets in any other fic since I'm literally the only person writing it, but that just makes me even more correct.
> 
> There is gonna be some stuff later on in this arc that may require additional content warnings. We're not at that yes, but this is just a heads-up: If that sort of thing is gonna be a deal breaker, watch this space, since as before I"ll mention any chapter-specific warnings up here in addition to adding the tag to the fic overall.
> 
> On an unrelated note, I'm back to school! I don't expect that to actually impact the rate at which chapters come out, but if that changes, I'll be able to let you know ahead of time on account of my buffer. Said buffer has been sitting at a chapter and a half for a while now, but I'm hoping to build it up some more before November. Hopefully that'll get easier once I finish up this arc. I'll also probably have more chapters that aren't quite as long as my usual fare going forward, though they'll still be on the same order of magnitude (this is a complicated story, after all).
> 
> You discussion prompt is: What's your greatest fear? Asking for a friend.

Peace Master, wearing a form-obscuring yellow pressure suit, stepped out from the yellow submarine’s waterlock and onto an unseeable ground thousands of fathoms beneath the sea. This was the darkest place he had ever been. Even the penlight illumination from the suit’s forehead, as well as the foreheads of the suits of the others who had exited before him, did little to cut through the gloom. Finn, Beau and Macy, had all exited the sub and were presently scouting out the trench bottom, placing glowing markers near gaseous vents, protruding rocks, and other such landmarks. All of this light and they couldn’t make out the trench cliff faces.

As PM moved toward the edge of the ring of illumination to begin his part in expanding it, there came a woosh behind him. Jake and Robin exited the sub simultaneously, these two only wearing helmets instead of full suits. Their flexible bodies, along with a steelskin potion Beau had brought, allowed them to natively withstand the immense pressures of the ocean floor, and going suitless would give them free rein to use their shapeshifting powers. Judging from Finn’s story, that kind of power might not be something they could afford to lose if things went topsy-turvy.

The doors shut, leaving Banana Man alone in the sub to keep an eye on critical systems and manage comms. “All systems nominal,” came his voice in everyone’s ear. “Hull integrity at 98%. Pressure seal at 100%. Battery at 86%, which should be more than sufficient. Powering down non-critical systems and useless sensory arrays. From here on out, you guys will be my eyes, ears, noses, and other assorted sensory orifices. Do you copy?”

“It’s what I do best,” Jake replied, shapeshifting into Banana Man. “Over and under.”

The party fanned out, examining the ground for anything that might stand out. “What are we looking for, exactly?” asked Macy. “I mean, I know we’re looking for the sword, but that’ll be pretty hard to spot. Anything else?”

“Tough to say,” came Finn’s crackly voice. “I can’t imagine the volcanic mound where Magolith’s body was located would have gone away completely. The only question is how deep it’ll be buried. There may need to be some serious excavation done before we can access the seal, if it’s remained connected to the mantle, and I can’t think why it wouldn’t.”

“So we’re looking for volcanic activity,” Beau summarized. “In a volcanically active trench. Am I reading the situation right?”

“Yes,” Finn confirmed, “that is the fundamental paradox at play here.”

“Hold on,” said Macy, “I’m gonna try something.” A beat. “Didn’t work.”

“You gonna share with the class?” asked Beau.

“Nah. Doesn’t matter at this point. Didn’t work.”

As it so happened, Macy had attempted to commune with the nearby creatures to ask for aid, but she had encountered a problem. It wasn’t that there were no creatures living down here at the bottom of this horrendous trench — though they were certainly few and far between, and none in headlight range. Rather, the creatures here were so utterly alien that she had no way of actually communicating psychically. The power Huntress Wizard had taught her, the magic of the guardian of nature, only worked when one was in tune with the natural harmony which ran through the ecosystem one was using its power to protect. This ecosystem was so fundamentally different from any she was familiar with that she may as well have attempted to communicate with a toaster, or a law student.

She sighed and began wandering around, searching halfheartedly and haphazardly. She couldn’t use her wild empathy. She couldn’t use her bow, for obvious reasons. In this awkward suit, she doubted she could use her special move. Even the lesson she’d begrudgingly learned from Tiffany, networking, was of no practical use at this point. Beau’s words from two chapters ago echoed through her mind. What  _ did _ she bring to the metaphorical table on this expedition? Why was she here, apart from the fact that she had been the one to whom Amaranth had entrusted this mission, and that it was under her home where the portal lay? Or lied? She wasn’t too sure. Either way, if there were a benefit to her presence at this point, she couldn’t see it.

_ Wait, that’s it! _

* * *

Meanwhile, above the abyss, Cragg Ambrosia was staring down a water dragon. The two had been locked in this contest for the hour or two it had taken for Banana Man’s sub to descend, and neither had blinked. One who knew Cragg only passingly, such as Macy, might mark this as a notable length of time for the excitable girl to stand still, as indeed would be any time longer than thirty seconds. The truth, however, was that Cragg found it easy for her body to remain static while her mind was elsewhere.

That elsewhere, at the moment, was wondering about water beds. People who used them and lived in the air said that water beds were remarkably comfortable. Would that still be true if one were to bring a water bed underwater? Probably not, but then again, air mattresses were also a thing. Would an air mattress be the underwater equivalent of a water bed, then, or would it need to be filled with something heavier than water, like molasses, or bicycles? Hopefully not bicycles; that would be bad for her mentor Canyon’s back.

_ Oh, right, Canyon! _ Cragg felt the cold weight of her sealphone sticking out of her back pocket, reminding her that she should probably call her mentor for backup once this dragon finally blinked and acknowledged Cragg’s dominance, which was probably how dragons worked. That had been what she was thinking of originally. How did she get on water beds? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t want to try. That kind of thinking would just get her caught in an infinite loop.  _ Like that, I suppose. What was I thinking about? _

The water dragon, meanwhile, was staring in confusion at a juvenile water spirit that had clearly wandered out of her very literal depth. Her seeable hammer had left both a figurative  _ and _ a literal impression on it, each of which still stung in its own way and made it wary of approaching her again or of turning its tail on her, but her eyes told a different story. The dragon was not a beast of emotion and mindfulness, nor did it care to be (or care at all, being a beast), but it could tell that those eyes were vacant and unfocused. She was like a powerful baby, and its unwavering hunter mind couldn’t properly slot her as either runty enough to be picked on or dangerous enough to be truly feared. As a result, it simply stood there, its mind snagged on a decision it was incapable of making.

Of course, as with all things, time came along and made the decision for it, and it made the decision by sending a rumble through its titanic belly. It needed sustenance, not breath, and a being made of water might provide the latter but not the former. Sending out a loud chirp to locate nearby schools of fish sizeable enough to be worth pursuing, it turned its head and corkscrewed away, following the wake of the current Cragg had previously bent into a bludgeoning instrument.

Cragg chuckled as the beast fled. “Ha!” she proclaimed. “I’m the right queen of the sea, is what I guess this means, then. Welp. Time to go mad with power. I’d better let Canyon know, she’ll be pumped.”

She took out her warm, blubbery phone and was halfway through dialing her mentor’s number when she suddenly paused, awareness coming back into her eyes. “Oh, while I’m at it, I should probably ask her for backup. Just in case. And also ask her if talking to myself means I’m crazy. I hope it does.”

* * *

Jake slipped a flattened hand under a boulder, then inflated the hand, sending the boulder skyward and out of the beam of his headlamp’s light. “Found one!” he exclaimed as he cast the beam onto a stream of inky gas erupting from beneath where the boulder was.

Peace Master bounded over. “Excellent work, Jake. Now let’s start digging.” He plunged his suit gloves into the dirt around it, releasing a spew of volcanic gases that gunked up the view on his helmet.

“Actually, wait,” said Jake, reaching up with his giant hand to catch the boulder on its descent before it could crush Peace Master’s skull like an egg in a metaphor about making omelettes and/or eggnog. “I don’t think this is the right one. We weren’t that close to the wall last time.”

When PM didn’t respond, Jake said the same thing again, this time remembering to press the button with his chin to activate the radio. The second time, the exorcist looked at Jake and probably rolled his eyes between his semi-opaque helmet. “Couldn’t you have remembered that sooner?” he snapped. “We’re dealing with dark forces here, this isn’t the time for goofing off.”

“I’m not goofing off,” Jake whined. “I’m just like this. Besides, tell that to Macy.” He gestured with his still-giant thumb toward a spot on the trench cliff where the nut had ascended half a dozen meters, her own light much brighter than the others’ and cutting through the trench like a knife through water.

“…know what I’m doing,” came Macy’s reply, staticky due to the distance. “Robin helped with the … for range.”

“I see what you’re trying to do,” said Finn, “but with our activity down here, there’s way too much dust. Even with a magically-augmented flashlight, everything will be too indistinct.”

“Why so … faith? I’ve been told that … eyes are very good. They don’t call me Eagle [several seconds of unintelligible static].”

“They don’t call you that at all,” countered Robin.

“We’ve been over this. Besides, they probably … think I see something! About forty klicks starboard.”

“What’s a klick?” several voices asked on the radio line simultaneously.

“I don’t know … somewhere. Just head where … pointing.”

Beau now got on the line. “Uh, I can’t  _ see _ where you’re pointing. That’s probably why nobody calls me ‘Eagle-Eyed Beau’.”

There was a crackling sigh, and then Macy said, “Alright, Robin … arrow, and I’ll just tell … you’re hot or…”

“Oh, I’m very hot,” Robin assured the entire exploration team. “It’s my natural rainicorn-dog allure, though the buttons in the tail help. They’re very  _ chic.” _

* * *

Eventually, Macy was able to convey the concept of hot-or-cold to Robin, and zhe created a projected arrow pointing in the direction where she had seen something. The team followed the arrow, carefully picking their way around the rocks, vents, and occasional technological debris scattering the trench floor. Before too long, they came upon a vent which was larger than the others, with a sloping mound so smooth and regular it seemed out of place.

Finn looked around at the massive cliffs lining the side of the cavern. “Yep,” he said into the radio, “now that I’m standing here, this definitely feels like the right spot.”

“How can you tell?” asked Jake.

“Oh, you know. The sense of bone-chilling terror that the visage of those cliffs instills in my body, as well as the sympathetic burning sensation I feel all over my skin as I remember that fight.”

“But you didn’t get burned. You had your suit on.”

“Fear isn’t rational, Jake.”

“Neither is inaction,” said Peace Master as he dug his hands into the seafloor sediment near the vent. “Let’s get digging.”

“Whoa there!” Beau grabbed Peace Master by the hip of the suit and plucked him out of the ground like a ripe sea cucumber. “There’s no need to do unnecessary manual labor. Let the power of magic trivialize this task.”

As the others stepped back, Beau held out eir hands and drew a circle in the dust with eir foot. E started waving his arms around, manipulating the disturbed sediment into a vortex. Robin watched on with rapt interest, eager to get a good gander at some fresh new magic.

Eyes wide open, Beau began to mutter in a monotone voice. “Łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku, łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku, łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku.” As e spoke, eir words seemed to mix with the dust swirling before him, transforming from sound into light, casting a beam of brilliant blue from the floor of the sea all the way up to the unseeable surface, then expanding outward until everyone else had to shield their eyes. Except Peace Master, whose helmet was still so covered in sediment that it acted as a vizor.

When the light faded, Beau was holding a shovel. “Made tools, ya dig?”

Macy was unimpressed, but Robin clapped diligently. “That’s a handy spell,” zhe said. “Let me try!”

“No, don’t, fool!” warned Beau. “You’ve got to know how to speak the words just right, or you’ll—”

But it was too late, Robin had already drawn the circle and begun to do the arm movements. “Łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku, łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku, łopata trzykrotnie do tyłu po polsku!”

“Huh,” Beau noted without pressing the radio button on the inside of eir glove. “Her diction’s actually pretty good.” E didn’t want the others to hear em backtracking, though.

There was another beam of light, which made everyone shield their eyes once again. When they opened them, Robin too had a shovel, except zhirs was colored red like zhir eyes. Whether this was because of zhir unique magic, or some other factor, nobody could say. Except Robin, who had colored it using zhir horn while they were distracted.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Jake. “To be honest, I’d kind of expected something to go horribly wrong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Robin, pointing zhir shovel at him accusingly.

“Now, now.” Macy patted Robin on the back reassuringly as she gently took the shovel from zhir paws and started digging, knowing for a fact that Robin wasn’t about to. “Don’t worry about it.”

There was genuine confusion in Robin’s voice as zhe repeated, “What’s that supposed to mean, though‽”

* * *

Banana Man was half-listening to this radio chatter. The other half was focused on an aerobics video he was watching. He’d laid out a fuchsia mat in the middle of the submarine, right behind the turret console. Somehow, he only ever managed to find time for his calisthenics in the most bizarre circumstances. He supposed that now of all occasions it was most important to stay limber. Really, though, he was just bored.

As a result, when his sensors pinged two large flashes of magic he knew must be the shovel-summoning spell, he tuned that out. He was on overwatch duty, or maybe more like underwatch, and alerting his team to the actions of his team wouldn’t do them much good. He knew he had a tendency to be too overeager sometimes, and if he gave his team unnecessary updates, they might start tuning him out. It was never good to tune out a source of potentially important information.

He would have done well to take that lesson to heart. He didn’t notice the smaller blip that occurred between the first two, the telltale sign of something taking note of nearby magical activity for the first time in decades. He didn’t spy the foreshock of what was to come.

He stretched his knee in time with the video in front of him, which he’d watched so many times he had it memorized. “Pretend you’re a donut,” said the bear floating in a technicolor void, “missing your hole. Go find it.”

All those watches, and Banana Man still never had any idea what the descriptions of those exercises meant. Truly, this was a shameful lapse of attention on his part.

* * *

Cragg spied the village at the top of the trench, where Canyon had instructed her apprentice to wait for her. It was a small, haphazard arrangement of giant coral called Cliffpeak Cleft, not that one could tell if they hadn’t visited the town on accident. Despite lying along the spot where an important undersea current crossed over a famously deep trench, Cliffpeak didn’t appear on any maps. It was an unincorporated township, after all, so the Department of Current Events — the undersea bureaucracy’s transportation infrastructure division, which was also in charge of map regulation — never sent out their cartographers. This was a reasonable course of action for dragon-related reasons. Even so, it struck Cragg as a shameful lapse of attention on the DCE’s part.

As she swam down to the village, she noticed a colorful speck moving out along the current, in the direction of the chasm. Curious, she altered course to intercept. “Hey there!” she shouted to the figure. “There’s some goings-on going on. You might want to hold up; these are dangerous waters.”

The speck, which was now no longer a speck (she could make it out as a clownfish pulling some a large load in some sort of sack), did not flag. For a moment, Cragg paused, looking back at the village. She wasn’t sure when Canyon would arrive, so she ought to stay and wait. On the other hand, a hero’s job was to protect people, first and foremost, and if this fish were to swim into danger under her watch and she did nothing to avert it, that wouldn’t be very protective. That had to take priority. Besides, Canyon had a phone; she could call.

“Hey, wait!” she cried out, attempting to swim faster to reach them, but as it turned out, fish were really good swimmers. Whatever Cragg’s strong suit was, it wasn’t speed. There was one technique she knew that would give her the propulsion to catch up to the clownfish, but she swore she’d never use it. Her mentor had told her that it was a forbidden technique, one which she must only use if her life depended on it, or the life of another. The clownfish’s life didn’t  _ appear _ to be in any danger, to be sure. However, if what her super cool very best friend Macy had told her was true — and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t — then it  _ would _ be in danger if they wandered off unawares. Cragg had successfully convinced herself that she had no choice.

Scrunching up her face, she released a powerful fart that propelled her right up to the clownfish, and also echoed for leagues. It was a shameful display, but a necessary one. Such were the sacrifices a hero must make.

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, holding herself upside down and barring the clownfish’s path, making them stop. “Hi, yes, hello. It’s me, Cragg Ambrosia, she/her, future hero of Ooo, and, um, don’t go there.”

The clownfish peered around her. “Where’s there?”

“Wherever you’re going, probably. There’s a big scary monster somewhere around here, and you can’t cross this chasm until it’s been defeated.”

“A big scary monster?” This fish seemed interested in the prospect. “Like, say, the kind what hoards dosh and whatnot?”

“In my limited experience I’m not aware of any other kind.”

“Ya think it might take a shine to my products?”

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask it.”

“Alright, I will.” They began to swim around her.

“Wait!” Cragg threw some water to the side to move in front of the clownfish again. “Okay, okay, I see my mistake. I guess I should clarify. It’s an evil, bloodthirsty monster that seeks nothing but the destruction of all life.”

“Wouldn’t that include the monster itself?”

“Maybe? I dunno, I’m not a thinker, I’m just a hero of Ooo. Future hero of Ooo,” she clarified, “but I guess also present hero of Ooo, since I’m literally helping to save the world right now.”

“That’s nice, kid, but I’m just a traveling salesman, so I’d like to travel and sell s’min, if ya don’t mind.” They moved to swim past her again.

This time, Cragg reached out and grabbed the clownfish’s fin. “Alright, hey, listen, buddy. What’s your name and pronouns?”

They seemed surprised by the question. “Waterlily Highschool, also she/her.”

“Listen, Lily. Right now, I’ve decided to make your safety a priority, so I don’t want you jeopardizing that by racing off into a horrible abyss.”

“Please, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Lily tapped the sack with her fin. “You haven’t seen what I’ve got for sale yet. With my—”

She was cut off by the sounds of screaming from Cliffpeak. Cragg craned her neck to see what was going on. At the edge of the namesake cliff, she could spy several wispy forms made of glowing dust swirl into the edge of town. For now, the screams were likely just caused by their sudden appearance, but things could get bad fast.

“Dang gangit!” exclaimed Cragg, using her forbidden technique to race toward the village. “I shouldn’t have left my post. Oh, wind under waves, Canyon is gonna kill me.” Grimacing, she turned back to shout at Lily, “Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone!” But the clownfish was already a speck swimming off into the distance.

Cragg couldn’t blame her. The secret technique could get you from point A to point B, but it didn’t leave point A a pleasant place to remain.

* * *

“Most unpleasant indeed,” noted Robin as zhe gazed upon the uncovered volcanic mound, protruding like puckered lips from the ocean floor, surrounded by smaller vents which in that simile zhe supposed would be acne spots.

“Insightful commentary,” Beau replied.

“Thanks, I try my best.”

“Easy!” Peace Master raised a hand in front of Robin, forcing zhir to step back from the mount. “Don’t be disovercautious, lest you smudge the circle. High magic is precise, and the smallest errors can be taxing.”

Indeed, surrounding the mount was an enormous sigil which seemed not to be drawn onto the uncovered igneous rock but intrinsically a part of it, patterns of natural banding and bleaching which might just as easily have been any other configuration as opposed to the very structured, runic shape they formed in reality. Robin couldn’t tell how zhe could possibly hope to smudge such an icon, but zhe stepped back further anyway. The ways of magic were often finicky, and it was usually best to defer to whomever had the most experience with a particular spell rather than relying on unwieldy, imprecise tools like deductive reasoning and common sense. This was the domain of nonsense, after all.

From above, Macy shone her enhanced beam over the sigil. “So this is the charm,” she observed. “You guys made … you were down here last?”

“Nah,” replied Jake. “This spell was sorta here earlier; it was the same thing keeping these bozos in the ground to begin with. Don’t really know who or what it came from, but that’s probably not super relevant.” You know where it came from. It was those other guys I was talking about last chapter. Jake’s right about their irrelevance, though.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” said Beau, who had retracted an arm to the inside of eir helmet, procured a notepad, and begun copying down sections of the sigil with a feather pen. “This is pretty exactly what I’d expected, so good, no surprises there. From a perfunctory glance, it looks to be your basic sealing spell, just with a lot of oomph behind it. Some real elbow grease. Some holy  _ cajones.” _

“I can verify that the  _ cajones _ are indeed holy,” interrupted PM.

“Yeah, I’ll need help with that part. So if this is the spot, where’s the sword?”

Finn approached the mound in the center, placing his hand on the top and then over it. “It’s here,” he announced. “The mound’s formed over it. Jake can stretch an arm down and grab it once Beau’s job is complete. It’ll hurt like all kinds of heck, but he can take it. He’s a big strong man.”

“I am?” Jake asked tentatively. “I can? You sure about all that?”

“Oh, definitely. I’ve got faith in you, buddy. You’ve got this.”

“…alright,” said Jake in the tone of someone who may or may not actually have this.

“Great,” said Beau, attempting to clap eir hands together only to be foiled by the high pressure and diving suit conspiring against his ability to produce such a noise. “Then there’s no better time than now to get started, since any other time would be either impossible or irresponsible. Peace Master, help me identify some of these runes. Robin, look around and see if you can find whatever power source is behind this spell. Finn and Jake, examine the Night Sword until you’re sure you can grab it  _ quickly _ once we’re done. Macy, run back to the sub and grab the box of crystals labeled ‘Lightless Detuned’; I’ll need them for my enhancement.”

“What?” Macy skilted, causing her to lose her footing and gently roll down the side of the cliff. “Why?”

“Because, while less powerful than other spell foci, they’ll be better able to integrate into this kind of circle, since I can’t see any apparati that a tuned crystal could match with.”

“No, I mean, why am I the errand girl?”

“Because everyone else already has a job.”

“There’s no shame in that,” added Finn. “I’ve been an errand girl myself on infrequent occasions, like when I had to deliver tarts for the annual backrubbing ceremony.”

“Hey wait,” said Jake, “didn’t that incident end with you accidentally paralyzing a whole bunch of people for life?”

“And that’s why those occasions are infrequent.”

“Well?” said Robin, as Macy was slow to move. “You’d better get moving, errand girl! There’s important stuff to be done doing.”

Macy turned off the radio in her suit. She didn’t have to take this from Robin. She was Macadamia the friggin Nut. Even so, she did pick up her pace as she walked down the ominous chasm toward the submarine. She didn’t want to spend too long separated from the others in this horrid place. She could feel her nut heart quicken in her chest as her eyes drifted from the pockmarked landscape up to the walls that vanished into infinite nothingness above. If the desolate reaches of outer space had a terrestrial equal and opposite, this must be it.

As she walked, she idly wondered about what creatures lived down here. They hadn’t come across any since their descent; presumably the presence of an ancient chaotic fire elemental locked beneath the Earth’s crust was something of a deterrent. She’d read about the creatures that might otherwise have lived here, though — strange fish with sunken eyes and fiendish lights, microbes that fed on chemical soup, starfish that looked like octopi and octopi that looked like ghosts. A part of her wished they’d found some down here. At the very least, they would have brought some color to the scenery.

Yes, they would have really made it pop. An eelpout might swim past her now, winding between her legs before slithering through the water like an aquatic snake. Above her, she might spot a school of lanternfish flickering blue like starlight, while further up still, an anglerfish waited for her next meal to come, drawn by her deceptive lure. She would reach out, hoping to touch one of these rare beauties, and when they inevitably denied this invitation from a stranger, she would resolve to come back later and try again. She would respect their autonomy, after all.

She probably wouldn’t have walked straight into the wall of the submarine and fallen over, comically rolling onto her backside like a misfortune turtle, but one can never be sure about such things. Grunting, she twisted once, twice, then three times, before she managed to properly right herself. She inspected her helmet for cracks and was relieved to find none. Obviously it was too sturdy for that, but paranoia is famously not logical. She sighed.  _ That’s what I get for wandering off on my own. _ Going back up to the airlock door, she knocked on it for Banana Man to let her in.

A beat.

“Fine,” Macy mumbled, and turned on her radio. “Yo, BM, hatch me.”

There was a brief pause before she heard the banana reply, “Okay, but I really don’t like that nickname.”

“Tell it to somebody who wow I’m sorry, I almost said a  _ really _ mean thing, which I wholeheartedly take back.” Macy cringed. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay. You are a teenager, after all. It’s to be expected.” The outer doorlock slid open and Macy stepped in.

As the door wooshed closed and the water began to drain, Macy asked, “Can I un-take it back now?”

* * *

“Take that!” shouted Cragg, crushing the smoky skull of one of the weird monster thingies between two water hammer hands. Hissing and bubbling, it flooded away as a loose cloud of silt and sediment before dispersing on the watery winds.

She heard a scream behind her, and she turned around to see a blobfish mermaid being harassed by a pair of the smoke monsters (smonsters). She held her arms up in an X in front of her face, turning her fingers into little hammers, then chopped her hands forward like a ninja and launched the hammers toward the smonsters with a yell. As they impacted, the smonsters dissolved just like all the others had.

“TY,” said the mermaid as Cragg swam up to make sure she was okay. “Those creepos were so grody, I was afraid they might—”

“NP,” Cragg interrupted. “GTG. People to save, you know.”

As she swam up, up, and away, she heard the mermaid say, “Bold of you to assume I know anything.”

Once she was above the buildings, Cragg got her bearings. There were still a few skirmishes going on around the city, but as she suspected, the existing guard and even just random civilians were quickly dispatching most of the smonsters. They weren’t particularly strong, either in terms of being able to deal damage or dish it back out. The two-handed water hammer technique only required 5% of her power to execute, after all, and the projectiles less than 1%, yet each was capable of taking them out no problem. The only reason they’d caused such a panic when they appeared was that they were so unexpected.

Even so, not everyone had even a basic ability to defend themselves. Cragg spotted a group of smonsters that had gotten further into town than most, townsfish fleeing ahead of them in a mad scramble. Waiting just a moment for her fingers to grow back, she jetted her way over to the group, forming each of her arms into large water hammers. That was  _ 20% _ power.

“Hyaah!” she shouted as she slammed the hammer onto the coral-paved street, sending out a shockwave that dissipated most of the nearby smonsters. The others were pushed back, but did not retreat, being either too brave or too mookish. As she stood up, she saw that in addition to the three remaining smonsters now circling her, she’d attracted a crowd of onlookers from the former flee-ers. Good; she knew how to play to a crowd.

Two of them charged toward her, their formless head-regions sprouting spearlike fangs with which they intended to impale her. Their movements had an amateurish predictability, so she was easily able to sidestep one. She let the other hit her right shoulder — her off-shoulder — from behind; it sent a bracing pain up that arm, but that meant she knew exactly where it was when she swung her other arm backwards to crush the smonster with a one-handed water hammer at 2%.

While the other charger attempted to recover, the one that hadn’t — the one staring her down — made its own attack, forming a smoky fist to punch her with. She took the blow but rolled with it, adding its momentum to hers, and grabbed the arm as she moved, ripping it off and causing it to dissipate.

The first smonster now lashed out with a newly-forged claw. Cragg didn’t even attempt to dodge, seeing it for the obvious feint that it was. The other smonster had formed a second fist to punch her with. She turned her left arm into a hammer to meet the blow halfway, destroying the smonster's second hand.

“Your cheap tricks have no effect on me,” she taunted. She knew the smonsters couldn’t understand her, but she got a cautious cheer from the crowd. “Whatever you try, I can match and exceed.”  _ A bit of a slant rhyme, but good enough for an improv. _

“Look out!” shouted a nereid bystander. Cragg did so, narrowly dodging a second swipe from the first monster, which was definitely not a feint. She could feel it pass through her hair, probably messing up her physically-impossible dye job. She did not appreciate the worried gasp the crowd now made.

Even so, never let it be said that she couldn’t take that in the spirit in which it was given. “Nice try, but not good enough!” she shouted, as she formed both arms into a single massive water hammer and brought it down onto the poor thing. 50% power was probably overkill, but as she watched the wispy smoke drift away in spirals, intermingling with some loose green hair dye, she regretted nothing.

Nothing, that was, except turning her back on the other smonster, as she felt water push against her back in advance of its oncoming charge.

She spun and threw herself down, hoping to roll with the punch as she had last time, but she needn’t have bothered. The smonster was already dissolving, its silty form shattered by the end of a long blue quadrident (like a trident but cooler). Cragg would recognize that quadrident anywhere. She looked up and behind to trace its thrower, and she saw exactly the person she’d expected.

“Impressive showmanship, my apprentice,” said Canyon, an approving smirk on her enormous turquoise face. “But you still have an unfortunate tendency to forget your caution.”

Cragg smirked back as she stood up and dusted herself off, a motion which made no sense underwater. “It takes one to know one, right?”

“Heck yeah it do. Let’s kick some butt.”

* * *

“How goes the world-saving?” asked Banana Man as Macy clumsily removed her wet diving suit. “Have you kicked evil in its butt yet?”

“That is one of my favorite pastimes,” Macy mused, setting her helmet down on the floor. “No, though. Not yet. Still working on that part.”

“Well, you’d best get to it. Hah!” Banana Man was still doing calisthenics to an instructional video, but he’d put on some headphones for Macy’s benefit. To her, it looked like he was just doing a weird dance.

“Right then.” Macy went over to Beau’s supplies and began looking through to find the specific box he’d mentioned. She picked one up whose label was smudged and peered inside, checking its contents. “I think this is what we need. You, ah, holding up good on your end here? All systems nanna mule?”

“What?” With a snap of his fingers, Banana Man paused the video, taking off his headphones and dangling them around his stem like a tiara. “Um, yeah. I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. No vital signs down here, besides ours, which I guess makes sense, and is certainly better than the alternative.”

“Yeah,” agreed Macy, though she wasn’t so sure. The alternative would have given her something to do, at least. “Lonely, though. Is it really okay for you to stay here?”

“Psh, yeah.” He gave her an awkward thumbs-up. “I’m better suited to this kind of thing anyway. Not much of an action star. Besides, I’ve got my video.” He pointed at the screen.

Macy followed his finger, then stepped around so she could see it. Even paused, the flickery bands of jagged color in the background had the appearance of motion. They were like their own special waves, filled with light rather than the crushing darkness outside. She imagined the sound they would make — a crisp, pure noise, uncomplicated by the intricacies of breaking on a material beach. It would be ethereal and relaxing. A great stress reliever.

She heard an echoing inside her shell cut through the din. She was back on the submarine, Banana Man knocking on her nut forehead. “—okay?” he was in the middle of asking.

Instinctively, she grabbed his wrist and yanked it away from her, tripping him with her leg so he faceplanted on the ground. “Sorry,” she cringed, feeling heat rush to her cheeks. “I think I’ve… yeah, sorry.” She was going to say she’d been away from Robin for too long, but that would have been an excuse, and as a very definitely responsible teen, she couldn’t do excuses.

“No problem,” Banana Man assured her, rolling over to reveal a brown spot on one of his eyes. “Better friends have treated me worse on first encounters.”

“That makes me feel even worse!” Macy backed up to her suit and began donning it. “I’m really sorry, but you’re right that I need to get to this. I can help you heal that when we get back.”

“No, don’t worry about it, I’m perfectly fine.” He patted the large brown bruise, which made a satisfying squelch.

“You don’t look fine.”

“That’s just being overly cautious. Now go.”

Grimacing, Macy nodded, then put on the helmet. She scooped up the crystals in her arms, stepped into the airlock, and mouthed one last “stay safe” before closing the inner door.

She shuddered. That was two hallucinations. A third would be a seriously bad omen, and that was the last thing this mission needed.

* * *

“So, Peace Master,” asked Robin as zhe lit up zhir horn, making it sensitive to the disturbances that might be caused by the presence of the magic zhe was searching for. “Are you superstitious?”

“That’s a weird question,” retorted Beau. “Nobody thinks they’re superstitious. If someone holds a superstition, they just think it’s true.”

“Not true,” said Jake, his voice staticky. He and Finn had finished their assessment of the Night Sword’s reachability (it was favorable), so he was stretching up to make sure there weren’t any incoming visits from the water dragon or anything that might have followed from the Sea of Sure Death, while Finn helped with the shoveling. “I’m way superstitious. There’s all … nonsensical prejudices and associations … wired into my b…utts.” He’d actually said “brain guts” but who’s counting?

“I guess that’s true,” Beau conceded.

“Regardless,” said Peace Master, “I am not. I know exactly what the evil I fight is capable of, and while I take great pains never to underestimate it, neither is anyone served when I falsely attribute it. A pure heart requires a balanced mind. Why do you ask, Robin?”

“I dunno,” zhe admitted. “I’ve just got this weird feeling, is all. Like this darkness around us is somehow symbolic.”

“No,” Finn assured zhir, “it’s quite literal darkness.”

“Also I feel like I’m forgetting something, but that’s normal.”

“Maybe you’re forgetting that you live in the real world, where things literally exist and aren’t metaphors,” suggested Beau.

“Could be that.” Robin wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but lacking a better one, zhe decided to accept it.

“…be what?” came Macy’s voice over the radio, as she entered the communicable range. “Are we teasing Robin?”

“No,” Robin lied.

“That’s … shame. Anyway, I come bearing gifts, and by gifts I mean crystals.”

“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Beau in an imitation of Abracadaniel’s voice that didn’t survive the quality degradation of the radio, making it sound to the others like e’d just become the second person to use that phrase unironically since before the twenty-first century. “Finn, you finished uncovering the runes?”

“Yeah,” he said, brushing away one last piece of dirt with his shovel. “I’m not really sure how they got here in the first place; I guess maybe the earth itself made them? But yeah, they’re free.”

“Robin, you located the power source of the runes?”

“No, and it feels like I’ve been searching for hours. This thing is a maze of confusing signals, trapping my mind in swirling galaxies made of strange and ancient magics. I could sweep this grid for centuries before even coming close to oh wait nevermind, here it is.” Zhe generated an arrow pointing to a nearby boulder. “There’s some sorta cavity in this rock, like a geode or something. I’m guessing the earth regurgitated it along with the runes, usin’ Magolith’s own tectonic energies. The power in this boulder is the only thing savin’ Ooo from destruction.”

“That’s great,” said Beau. E lumbered over and smashed the rock with eir magic shovel, cracking it in half and revealing a glittery geode that shone with pulsating magical light. The shovel dissolved on impact, clearly having just run out of durability. Beau held out a hand in Macy’s direction. “Toss me a crystal, will you?”

“Sure thing,” said Macy, and literally tossed one, overhand.

Beau caught it no problem, holding it inside one half of the geode until it, too, glowed. “Perfect,” he said, taking it out. “This’ll work, then. The earth may be billions of years old, but when it comes to spellcraft, no amount of experience can amount to a good formal education and apprenticeship.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Macy, skilting. “Don’t they usually say the opposite of that?”

“Ease up there. I’m the sardonic one.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

Inside his helmet, hidden by the glare of the magic-infused crystal, Beau grimaced. “Well, isn’t that just great? We’ve doubled up.”

* * *

Doubled up, Cragg and Canyon made even shorter work of the remaining smonsters. Canyon refused to call them smonsters, but Cragg didn’t care. They were smonsters, end of story. Don’t go anywhere; it’s not actually the end of the story yet. In a way, we’re just beginning. Yes, I’m going somewhere with this. Yes, I will get to the part with you in it. No, it is not next chapter. We’ll get there when we get there.

“So, if they’re not smonsters,” asked Cragg as her teacher swirled some gathering dust to keep the smonsters from reforming, “what are they?”

“Dust devils,” answered Canyon. “Spirits of decay and erosion that can possess particulate matter. They normally live in plains and deserts on the surface. These ones probably migrated here from a desert island near the Sea of Sure Death. They’re weak in the water, but when they pick up poisons from volcanic fumes, they can be deadly.”

“Oh.” Cragg glanced at the edge of town, where the chasm extended downward into the depths; the smonsters had come from down there, and she knew there was often volcanic activity in places like that, too.  _ “Have _ they picked up those poisons?”

“Nah. You’d be able to tell. The smell gets unbearable.”

“I don’t have a very good sense of smell,” Cragg confessed. “It’s basically the weakest of my seven senses. Though, really, there are more bad smells than good, so I don’t think I’m missing out on much.”

Canyon suddenly jumped up, getting herself to a position high over the town, from which she could survey all the areas where the smonsters had struck. Dang, she was thinking of them as smonsters now. From what she could see, all was quiet on the front for now. The vaporous assailants would regroup soon, probably with more reinforcements, but she would be prepared by then. Besides, that wasn’t the problem.

She lowered her arms to her side and pointed her toes to fall back down quicker, sticking into the ground next to Cragg like an arrow. “We’ve got clean currents,” she assured her student, “but let’s think this through. It’s pretty rare for sm— for dust devils to venture too far from their domains, mostly on account of their extreme fragility when they do. Today, they launched an attack on an unthreatening current village. Also today, Macy asks you to come out here to help defend her sub on an expedition to the trench atop which the village sits. Now, does that sound like a coincidence to you?”

Cragg shrugged. “Iunno. Probably gotta be, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes way more sense.”

“The dust devils serve chaos and entropy, which means they serve GOLB. One of GOLB’s generals is trapped at the bottom of that canyon. My guess is that, whatever that expedition’s purpose is, they’ve done something to disturb that general’s reserve troops, and lacking any coherent direction, they’ve decided to start attacking whatever’s attackable. Did Macy tell you what her mission was?”

Cragg shook her head. “It’s really my fault for not asking, and also for telling her not to tell me so it’d be a surprise.”

Canyon gave Cragg a thumbs-up. “That’s okay, that’s totally a reasonable thing to do. Besides, Finn’s with them, and he was there. He’ll keep them from doing anything too irresponsible with the sealing spell.”

“Jake, too.”

“Eh.” Twirling her quadrident, she walked over to the edge of the cliff and peered down into the abyss. “I hope they’re okay down there. The murky waters have been said to drive anyone who spends too long wading through them  _ crazy.” _

“Sounds like my aunt piloting a submarine!” exclaimed Cragg with a wink.

“You don’t have an aunt.”

“Uh, yeah, duh. That’s why it’s crazy.”

“Fair enough.” Canyon reached up, feeling the faint current whose associated trade route was the only reason this town existed in the first place. She began to pool it around her hand. “We should focus on reinforcing the town for now. Jake can take care of those guys, no problem, and there’s nothing else around here that needs defending.”

Suddenly, Cragg’s eyes widened in guilt. “Um, about that,” she said, her voice lacking its usual pep. “There’s a funny story.”

“Funny how?”

“Funny in that it involves a clownfish, and only for that reason.”

* * *

“Why don’t I tell a funny story?” suggested Robin, slinking in between Macy and Beau to push the two apart. “I mean, it’s pretty dark down here, and as a rainicorn-dog I know how to lighten the mood. Eh? Light-en the mood.”

Macy crossed her suit arms, which were much thicker than her actual arms on account of having any thickness whatsoever, and turned away from the wizard and interposing equanine. “Whatever, I’m fine,” she said, her voice breaking. “And since when did you have the linguistic awareness to make metaphorical puns like that?”

“Hey!” Robin barked. “I can use metaphors no problem, I just sometimes have trouble recognizing when  _ other _ people are using them. Just don’t tell anyone else about that.”

“You’re on a public line,” was all of Beau’s response; Robin retreated at that.

Peace Master yanked the crystal out of Beau’s hand, although with the suit-imposed awkwardness, it was less of a yank and more of a slow, clumsy tug. He walked over to a part of the ingrained floor sigil and placed the crystal down, whereupon the sigil began to glow. This luminescence spread outward, like milk if milk were made of light bulbs, until about a third of it was lit up with this arcane energy.

The glare on the crystals made it difficult for Macy to make out the pattern from where she was standing, so it ended up resembling a milk spill to her, seeping up and out through the inky black waters of the trench. Long ago, Princeso had taught her not to cry over spilled milk, so she managed to hold back the frustrated sob that had been building up inside her for longer than she cared to admit.

“But why?” she’d asked her chocolate-chip cookie caretaker, who leaned against the back of her metal folding chair to give his bad leg a rest. Since he’d just prepared dinner for her and the other orphans, he was wearing a chef’s hat over his usual headgear, but she could still make out the silhouette of his flower tiara underneath, marking him as Princess Cookie of the Grass Kingdom. She was five years old at the time, so it hadn’t occurred to her to ask why Grass Kingdom royalty worked at a Candy Kingdom orphanage. That wouldn’t happen until well after the egg incident, but before the robot incident.

“Because,” answered Princeso, placing a calming hand on her nut shoulder as she held back a sniffle. “Milk can be cleaned up. A fresh cup can be poured. Save your tears, okay? Be strong.”

“O-oh.” Macy nodded in understanding. “It’s just, I’d heard that expression before, but I thought it was because something bad happened when tears mixed with milk.”

“Like what?”

Macy considered this. “Like maybe, they form together into some sort of tear milk monster that attacks you and eats your face off!”

“Haha!” This laugh didn’t come from Princeso. As she grew older, Macy would realize Princeso  _ never _ laughed at any of the ridiculous things the children under his charge said; he only ever laughed  _ with _ them. Rather, the laugher was a white chocolate chip sitting a couple seats down from Macy, a fellow orphan named Masse Yvoire who was about the same age. “A tear milk monster? I bet I could take that!” He mimed some very ineffectual-looking sword swings.

“No you couldn’t,” scoffed Macy. “Not with a sword, anyway. It’d go right through something like that. You’d need some sort of magic spell.”

“Madthi spe!” repeated the baby carrot seated between the two, banging their hands on the table in rhythm with the pounding of Macy’s heart in her ear slits.

That recalled sensation brought Macy back to reality.  _ Wow, that recollection of a moment from my past didn’t contain any useful lessons for my present situation. _ Media had given her a faulty expectation of the utility she could expect from her hallucinations. There were times when she felt like her occasional inability to distinguish reality from imagination just wasn’t all it was hyped up to be.

Belatedly, she realized that was her third dissociative episode in a row. She also realized that, in reality, Beau and Peace Master were arguing over the radio, as well as in person.

“—don’t care about your experience,” Beau was saying as e retrieved a crystal from the box Macy had procured from the sub. “Don’t take things out of people’s hands like that. I might have fumbled, you know.”

“I had to get this moving,” PM growled. “You were taking too long, between being showboaty and childish. I have more important things to do than wait for you to be done lecturing a literal teenager about having an attitude.”

“Oh,  _ I’m _ showboaty?” Charging the crystal in the geode with one hand, Beau pointed an accusing finger at the exorcist with the other. “You’re the one who leans so hard into your priestly aesthetic you don’t even go by your real name,  _ Franz. _ I’ll bet you’re still wearing your cloak under that pressure suit. What’s so special about priests, anyway? It’s not like it’s hard to talk to Glob; he’s in orbit right now. Banana Man probably has a closer line to him than you, so maybe you’re the real cultist.”

“Cultist‽ How dare—” PM (lethargically) stomped toward Beau. Even beneath his blackened vizor, the insult on his face was plainly evident.

Jake stretched out his own interposition between the two of them in the form of a giant hand, which he shaped into a stop sign; Finn, however, was the one to get on the radio line. “Could you two maybe not do this now?” Then, after a brief silence, he added in a quieter voice, “I figured a mission without LSP would be  _ less _ grating, but here we are.”

“Ouch, low blow,” said Robin, cringing. “Playing the LSP card.” Zhe’d met Lumpy Space Princess only in passing, when zhe’d been hanging out with zhir poppoppop back in the Candy Kingdom and they’d crossed paths, but that small amount of contact was more than enough.

“Yeah, well, I at least know I’m more  _ useful _ than LSP,” insisted Beau, who had not removed the crystal even though it was clearly charged. In fact, while Macy was zonked out, another crystal had been emplaced, making this the last one. “I’ll take annoying and useful over that business every time.”

“Hey, man, don’t be mean to LSP,” complained Jake. “She and I are kindred spirits.”

“Dude,” said Finn, “don’t ever say some awful thing like that again, okay man?”

As fascinating as Macy found this conversation, she knew she’d need to step in, and she thought she’d figured out how. “Quiet!” she shouted, the suit mic’s peaking causing the word to get muffled in the transmission. They got the memo, though, since the line went dead after she said that.

A beat.

“Fellow questants,” she continued, “I think it’s time we all took a figurative step back before we say something that can’t be taken back. I’ve never seen a party fall apart, but I imagine it would start something like this.” She didn’t add that she thought  _ everyone _ else here was starting to behave like children, and that as a former child she should know, but she thought it.

“Pretty much, yeah,” admitted Finn.

“I’m going to walk you through a materialization exercise my school therapist, Dr. Upe, taught me. I use it to help manage my, uh, own stuff, but I think it’ll help us here, too. Everyone, breathe in for five seconds.”

They did so, causing a strange crackling noise to be transmitted on the radio lines.

“Hold your breath for six seconds.”

Six seconds of blissful silence. Macy wondered if this was what it was like to be in a recording booth before one started the recording, but she focused on the sound of her heartbeat and the weight of the suit to keep herself anchored.

“Now breathe out for eight seconds.” More crackling static.

She walked them through the rest of the exercise — name five things you can see, four you can hear, three feel, two smell, and one taste. All of them reported a little bit of the cleaning solution Banana Man must have used to disinfect the insides of the suits, but only Jake and Robin with their canine noses could identify it as ammonia. Once that was all done, they had quite forgotten why they were fighting.

“Well, that was fun, but this thing’s done,” said Beau, taking the crystal out of the geode. “Let’s get this spell repowered, eh, whaddaya say, culty boy?”

The exorcist snapped. “Don’t call me that!” he shouted as he leapt in an enraged slow-motion arc toward Beau. Despite this, the wizard was also slow-motion, so he ended up colliding with em anyway. The crystal was sent flying out of Beau’s hand, where it very slowly shattered against the rocky ground before Jake could stretch a net finger around it.

“Rats!” exclaimed Beau as he started to get up, pushing Peace Master off of him. “Glob, man, I get it, it’s a sore subject. At least we’ve still got all those extra crystals to—”

Jake, who had been reaching out to separate the two again, missed. His arm had been morphed into a brick wall, and he’d also turned blue for some reason; this blue wall came down hard right on the box of crystals, shattering it with a sound like a rampaging dog in a china shop, sending out a three-dimensional cloud of shrapnel.

Macy retracted her arms into the helmet of her suit so she could grasp her actual head in shock. “What the f—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She was going to say “flippity-hecking-darn”, don't worry.
> 
> Well, that was certainly a chapter. It had events, and characters, and even dialog! Look, I don't always have a lot to say about behind-the-scenes, especially for pretty functional chapters like this one. Almost everything that happened here was either something I'd planned ahead in the outline (like Waterlily Highschool), something I realized I needed to insert to make those events gel with ongoing character arcs (especially Macy's), or detail work to flesh out characters I haven't been able to explore as much or will play a role later on in the arc (such as Cragg).
> 
> Actually, there is some interesting stuff to be discussed. First of all, the beginning of the chapter was my stopping point for two weeks while I took a break for burnout/Camp NaNoWriMo June. I was just getting tired from ceaselessly working on this one story for over a year, and when I came back, I was much more invigorated and quickly realized what had been giving me trouble: What, exactly, I should do to marry Macy's ongoing arc with her necessarily limited role in this chapter (I knew I wanted her to feel somewhat useless, but if I had her actually _be_ useless, that would make her a dull protagonist). I didn't even have to take a break from writing! Just from writing this specific story. Funny how that works.
> 
> The one other improvisation (aside from giving Canyon what amounts to a giant fork for a weapon) was the ending. You see, originally, I'd had a different character make that massive mistake at the end that artificially lengthens the mission and allows the rest of the plot to unfold. It doesn't matter who. I gave that to Jake instead, for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are spoilers relating to future character arcs. One I can share, however, is this: At this point it's fairly explicit that there's some sort of tangible effect being down in the deep dark depths has on the psychologies of those who dive into the abyss. If you look back at what's happened to his character over the course of the show, I don't think it's hard to argue that Jake would be pretty susceptible to that. Malleable body, malleable mind (I could have also given it to Robin for very similar reasons, but I already did that in _The Portal_ and I haven't run out of ideas yet).
> 
> There's one other interesting tidbit being dropped in this chapter: In addition to having (at least) two distinct narrators, there is a distinct audience of said narration. Do not ask me anything about that particular plot thread; I'm not going to reveal anything about her, so it's useless to try.
> 
> My greatest fear is that one day, I'll get drunk, lose my inhibitions, and reveal my innermost psyche to the world, and they'll revile me for it — and that they'll be right to do so. As you can tell, I put a lot of myself into Robin (though we're different in most individual ways).
> 
> Anyway, your next episode preview:  
> “I wonder why we even bother inviting him to these.” He did not whisper.


	6. Anemone Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for missing an update week. I have *no* good way to keep track of update days, unfortunately. Next update will probably be on time.

Witness, if you’ll excuse me, I really feel I must interject here. You’ve been doing a fine job telling this story so far, and I appreciate that you want to stick with this narrative thread for a while, but it really would behoove you to let me insert a scene at the start of this episode. I won’t derail to talk about our villains, I promise — there’s not much to tell that wouldn’t make this part of the story more complicated than it already is, after all. Instead, I’d like to wind the clock back, as it were, to look back at some important events in Jake’s life which our patient audience here may not be aware of. It might make a good contrast for all this stark tension, as well as putting it in its proper context. Whaddaya say?

I’ll take that as a yes. Now, where shall we begin? Ah, I know. I’ll make that fallback decision creative types have done time and time again: I’ll relay these anecdotes in chronological order. Bracing, I know. Strap in; there’s a spectacle about to start.

Forty-four years ago. Jake and his brother Jermaine were boxing in the forest, as kids did. They’d got on these big, primary-colored boxing gloves, which were clearly too big for them. Sloppy fighters, honestly. They wouldn’t last one round in the ring. I don’t mean against me, mind; just in general. Though if I had a body I could kick those babies’ butts.

Jake grew his arm to massive size and threw a mean sucker punch at his bro. And by mean, I mean really quite bad. If Jermaine had a milligram of fighter in him, he’d have been able to roll with a hit like that as easy as he wags his tail. Alas, ‘twas not to be. His face bore the brunt of the attack, sending him toppling to the forest floor, facedown among the grasses and twigs. He crushed a bug on the way down. Pathetic.

As Jake collapsed next to his brother and started bawling like the six-year-old he was, his dad Joshua walked up behind him. He’d been watching from a distance, and by watching I mean napping with that slate-grey hat of his pulled over his eyes. The crying of a child had disturbed him from his slumber, so he’d gotten up to see what the meaning of this was. We’ve all been there.

When he saw his third-favorite son lying there, he stopped short. “Jake, what did you do to your brother?” he asked, in a quick, unaffected, enunciated voice that would be perfect for radio or auctioneering.

“We were just playin’ and then I got out of control!” Jake managed to choke out between sniffles. “I’m sorry, dad.”

Joshua just patted Jake on the head. “No, son, you did good. Having no self control makes you a tough galoot, like me!” He pointed at himself. Real father of the year material, that guy.

Predictably, this advice — though entirely true — only wetted Jake’s waterworks. “But I don’t wanna hurt nobody!”

“Well that’s too bad, kid, ‘cause you’re gonna hurt everybody—”

This was too much for our poor young hero, who pounded his fists against the ground. “Nooooooo!” he exclaimed, his wail reaching the very heavens and shaking angels from their roosts or some poetic garbage like that.

“—who’s evil,” Joshua finished, though his favorite son didn’t catch that last part.

Forty years ago. Jake sat atop a hill, shrunk down and hidden inside the bulb of a tulip. Next to him lay his partner in crime, Tiffany Oiler, covered in a camouflage tarp and peering at the road below them through a set of pilfered opera glasses. From this grass-covered hill, they could examine all the traffic going into and out of the Breakfast Kingdom. It was the perfect spot for a pair of mischievous miscreants like they. After all, no good ever came from someone lying atop a grassy knoll.

At last, Tiffany spotted something of interest through his opera glasses. “Our ignorant quarry approaches,” he whispered into a walky-talky. “Like a blind and stupid gopher, it wanders down that narrow log bridge called inevitability, led on by the siren song of commerce, but little does it know it—”

Jake stretched an arm over and pressed the button to turn on the walky-talky. “They’re coming out,” he announced. “Let’s roll.”

He leapt out of the flower and, alongside Tiffany, rolled down the hill. When they reached the road, he stretched out into a sheet over it, so that the truck just now exiting had no choice but to run him over. He faked a scream of pain (or so he would have his allies believe, since that pain was incredibly real) and reformed into his normal shape, drawing out the very worried stromboli driver before Tiffany leapt out of the nearby bushes.

“You darn meathead!” he shouted, which was highly offensive and he oughtn’t have done that. “You hurt my friend with your obviously reckless, careless, and all-around competenciless driving. I ought to sue you for everything that you’re worth.”

The stromboli ignored Tiffany, instead rushing over to Jake and examining his wounds. He was actually worried, the naïve peon. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Please be okay. I’d never want to hurt anyone, even on accident. Oh, what do I do? I’m so bad with this.”

“But since I’m generous,” Tiffany continued, ignorant of being ignored, “I’ll let you off with a warning this time. Just don’t let me catch you being that uncautious again.” As he spoke, two of he and Jake’s accomplices were already in the process of cracking open the back of the truck and unloading its valuable cargo: two tons of maple syrup, which had been en route to refineries in the Candy Kingdom.

Jake could do nothing but lie there, squished against the road. Everything hurt.

Thirty-five years ago. The Candy Kingdom was half of a pair, now, and each was preparing for war. Finn and Jake sat in a war room with dear old Bonnibel Bubblegum, her then-future wife Marceline, and a yet-unlobotomized Peppermint Butler, along with the Candy Corn Colonel, the Earl of Lemongrab, and her wildcard, Susan Strong. Susan wasn’t a member of the Candy Kingdom; while Finn had been a baby when he was taken from the Islands and wound up on Ooo, Susan was a young adult who’d been sent to track him down. She felt no loyalty to the kingdom’s monarch, nor did she have any personal stake in the fight between the two kingdoms. There were, however, three factors which Princess Bubblegum held over her head as leverage to compel her toward this fight: her friendship with Finn, her personal distaste for the brand of authoritarian practiced by Gumbald (only  _ mildly _ hypocritical on our favorite pink princess’s part), and her desire to atone for past mistakes.

“I don’t like this,” said Finn. This wasn’t the first time he’d expressed that sentiment, and it most certainly would not prove to be the last. Despite being possibly the greatest adventurer of his generation, he had acquired a distaste for the beautiful mindless conflict that made adventuring a viable career choice for adolescents and young adults the war-wrecked world over. “This war may be a forest fire that’s bound to spread to our village, but that doesn’t mean we should walk into it with our arms outstretched wearing cloaks made of kindling.” Also, he had a way with words when the mood struck him, which was not frequently enough.

Marceline nodded in agreement. “Bonnie,” she pled, “you should at least do something to work for peace. Maybe get a message to the King of Mars; surely he’d—”

“Unacceptable!” shouted Lemongrab, squeezing the arms of his chair so hard juice oozed out of his fingers. “King Man cannot be trusted. The one who sits atop the universe can never see what is beneath him, only what is reflected in the funhouse mirror of divinity.” Lemongrab, on the other hand, ought to have considered being less eloquent. It was a bad look for him.

Peppermint Butler leaned toward Jake, putting a hand in front of his mouth. “Better than the funhouse mirror that is his mind,” he quipped. “I wonder why we even bother inviting him to these.” He did not whisper.

Princess Bubblegum either did not notice her servant’s rude remark or was simply inured to it. I mean, who could blame her? It was  _ Lemongrab. _ “More importantly,” she said, “I’m quite certain there’s no point in trying to reason with Gumbald, at least not at this time. As far as I’m concerned, we were at war when he attacked Finn—” she pointed at her knight, who shrank back at being used as a rhetorical prop against himself — “in my castle, during his birthday celebration of all times! No, the time for peace is over.” Candy Corn held out a hand under the table for a high-five, which Bubblegum oh-so-generously condescended to give.

“Ugh,” groaned Marceline, leaning her head over the back of her chair at an angle that would have snapped a mortal neck. “I hate it when you get like this! I can’t stand this; I’m leaving.” She got up and floated out of the room, not bothering to push in her hair or even close the door behind her. Then she turned invisible and floated back into the room, for she didn’t want to be out of the loop.

Jake leaned back in his chair, tuning out the war meeting because tactics weren’t really his department. Plus, most of it consisted of trying to argue that Susan should use her ridiculous buffness powers to fight in the war; getting along with Susan was  _ really _ not his department. Still, his eyes drifted to Finn. He noticed that his friend was keeping his robotic right arm under the table, gesticulating solely with his left. He wondered why that was. I’ll let you wonder, too. It’ll be like a riddle, except you can never be sure if you’ve found the solution.

He was forced to pay attention when Bubblegum let out an ear-piercing screech of frustration he wasn’t sure the non-canines at the table could hear. “Stop being so obstinate!” she insisted, glowering at Susan Strong. “You  _ owe _ us this. My uncle is a crazy doodoo-head who will stop at nothing to twist Ooo to his own malignant image.”

Susan merely shook her head. “You may be right about him,” she conceded in that stop-and-start voice of hers, “but you are wrong when you say it would help if I joined in the war. There are people that deserve hurting and people that do not, but war doesn’t know the difference. It’s not okay to hurt good people just so bad people get hurt too. I will not help you to do that.”

Alright, I think that’s enough context. Back to you, Witness.

* * *

Don’t think I missed that comment, Announcer. I’ll let it slide for now. Now, where were we last time? Ah, that’s right. Jake had just accidentally smashed a case full of very important crystals, sending shards of milky quartz everywhere, with his bare fist. That had to hurt.

Beau was too stunned to move, instead just standing there in shock. Peace Master was too embarrassed at his own fumble to notice this new one. Robin found the whole situation amusing. Macy, however, was thoroughly unamused as she bounded along the ocean floor toward Jake.

She shouted into the radio, repeating her expletive from the end of the previous chapter, as she reached the crumpled box. She shoved Jake’s hand-wall off of the box in an impressive display of strength, then pawed around the inside of the box for any crystals that had remained relatively intact. Finding none, she picked up the box and tossed it upwards in frustration. “Do you have any idea how long I spent getting that box?” she exclaimed.

“No,” answered Robin, “because I didn’t bring a watch, and even if I did it probably wouldn’t work.”

Jake was positively mortified. He shrank down to his normal size, still blue. He might have shrunk down further, but the tug of vacuum forces as he threatened to go below the size at which his helmet would fit reminded him that he still needed to breathe. He curled up into the fetal position and began rocking himself, not bothering to extract the crystal splinters. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated, not bothering to turn on the radio. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

At last, Peace Master noticed what had happened. He took it in stride, since he was used to improvising. “Do you have any more of those crystals, Rhombeaufortchamp?” he asked.

Beau grimaced. “I’m afraid not,” e answered. “I’ve got other gems, for sure, but those were the ones we needed.”

“Could you make do with the others?”

“Too risky. We want a zero percent failure chance on this, or as close as we can come, anyway. Unfortunately,” he admitted, “cracking open that geode may have put us on a bit of a timetable. No telling if the seal will last long enough for the Earth to provide another battery. Well, I guess Robin could tell with zhir magic vision. Robin?”

“I can definitely see the magic,” Robin said, zhir horn glowing inside zhir helmet, eyes fixed on the mini-volcano at the center of the massive sigil everyone was standing on. “I’m staring right at the lines of power. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how to parse what I’m looking at, so I can’t actually answer your question.”

“Rats.” Beau looked down, then looked up. “Banana Man, can you hear us?”

There was a pause of several seconds, then a very staticky, “Yes,” in the exact voice of twenty-first century singer/comedian Weird Al Yankovich.

“Are there any nearby undersea villages? I don’t know why I specified undersea, that was probably unnecessary. I guess I ramble when I’m nervous. It’s not a habit I’ve noticed I had before, unless it is and I—”

“There is,” Banana Man cut in. Based on the delay, he had intended to cut into a much earlier part of the ramble. “Cliffpeak Cleft, on the intersection between this trench and a stretch of current called the Anemone Way. It’s pretty nearly due up of you guys. Why, did something happen?”

“Nope!” Macy said quickly, though to him it obviously wouldn’t seem hasty. “We’ve got this under control, so don’t worry about anything. Just give us directions to Hilltop Heights or wherever.”

Beau was about to ask Macy why she hadn’t told Banana Man about the incident, but e realized asking her over the radio line would constitute doing just that, so e remained mum and tried to puzzle it out for eirself. Most likely it was just the natural teenage instinct to avoid trouble. Even so, the more e thought about it, the worse an idea it seemed to worry their pilot. The conditions down here must have worsened the psyches of the other members of the expedition, leading to the accident. It didn’t sound like Banana Man had been affected, but if he were made anxious, he’d be infinitely more susceptible.

“Macy,” Beau said, “if it’s okay, I’d like to task you with—”

“Nope!” she said again, the vitriol in her voice carrying through despite the low sound quality of the radio. “I’m not going on another fetch quest. It’s the least rewarding type of quest, and I’m too close to a mental breakdown as it is without that mind-numbing tedium. That’s not hyperbole, either. I might legitimately break down like small, blue, and stretchy over there.” She pointed at Jake, who was still huddled and mumbling to himself.

Beau rolled eir eyes, not that anyone could see it that well through his helmet. “That wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to ask you if you knew any other exercises like the one you’d just had us go through. Focusing our minds may be a critical component of our success on this mission.”

“Oh.” She felt the blood rush to her nut cheeks; she was fairly certain the others could see her redden even through the suit. “In that case, yep.”

“I can help with that,” provided Finn. “I picked up some meditation tricks of my own that day I spent bonkers decades in that mind dungeon.”

Jake, who had by now mostly stopped moving, finally said something over the radio lines — that being, “I’m sorry about that, man.”

Finn shrugged slightly. “Statute of limitations. Although I guess I don’t know if that applies to things you only did in alternate timelines that may or may not have actually happened. I’ll have to ask Prubs about that.”

“It does not,” said Beau. “Ask me how I know.” But nobody was in the mood to ask em.

“Anyway,” Finn continued, “I’ll probably let you take the lead, since I’ll fully admit that being down here is giving me the creeps, but I just wanted to let you know that you’ve got my help.”

Macy gave Finn a slow thumbs-up. “Thanks, dude.”

“The creeps?” asked Jake. “Not that I don’t relate, but what gives? We weren’t like this last time.”

“From the sounds of it,” suggested Peace Master, “last time you came with a team that knew each other much better. The darkness that lies within one person’s heart can often be brought out by another. Like,” he admitted, “what I shamefully fell prey to when I rose to Rhombeaufortchamp’s taunting.”

“Like a pissy baby,” agreed Beau. A beat. “Okay, maybe that was unnecessary. Did I mention I snark when I’m nervous?”

Macy spied her opportunity and took it. “Hey,” she said, “I thought  _ I _ was the teen around here. Hey-o!” She held up her hand, and Robin created an illusory hand to high-five it, complete with sound effect. Zhir tutelage was paying off.

Beau hung his helmeted head. “I deserve that.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Jake, ignoring the past several remarks. “Finn, you were supposed to not  _ have _ a fear of the ocean anymore.”

“I didn’t,” Finn agreed. “Then I got a new one.”

“That’s a raw deal, man. A straight-up rare chicken filet of a situation.”

“Aren’t you not supposed to cook chicken rare?” Robin asked in confusion.

“Exactly.”

Robin skilted; Macy put a suited hand on zhir unsuited shoulder, as if to say, “Don’t worry, it’s just an expression thing.”

PM cleared his throat, which was barely recognizable as a sound a humanoid could make once filtered through radio fuzz. “As fascinating as this topic is, shouldn’t you get a move on?”

“You who?” asked Jake. “I don’t think we ever actually talked about who’d be going to that village or whatever.”

“Obviously it could only be you and Robin. Everyone else is needed down here.”

“Won’t I be needed to stay with Macy?” asked Robin.

“Nah, I’ll be okay. I’m literally going to spend the entire time doing mind-focusing exercises, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Jake still seemed reluctant to move, though at long last he softened his quartz-stabbed paw to allow the shrapnel to fall out. “Why can’t Finn go?”

Finn crossed his arms. “Jake, you’re stalling.” He was stalling, too — trying to avoid being forced to talk about the terror growing inside him at the memory of his last trip. It was like a fire that all the oceans in the world couldn’t put out, threatening to burn straight through his suit and skin until it seared his soul. He was fairly certain it didn’t carry through the radio, but his breath was a bit more ragged as the fear started to choke his lungs. But that didn’t change the facts. Jake was, after all, still stalling.

Robin was completely oblivious to all this. Zhe morphed zhir body into an eel’s, complete with back fin. “Well, let’s not dally by the rosebushes,” zhe said as zhe started swimming up and away. “Tally ho, poppopppop; it’s aces high and off to the races! BM, be a dealer and tap us into the turn-by-turn.”

As Banana Man began complaining about that nickname, Jake gave Finn one last concerned look before turning his hind legs into a frog’s and leaping up into the great blackness above. He could always tell when his brother was hurting, of course. For now, moving on with the mission might be the only way to make him hurt less.

“Hey, wait,” Macy said once they were a bit further away, “what’s the effective range on our radios, anyway?”

Beau replied, “Oops.”

* * *

“And you’re sure she went this way?” asked Canyon, standing on the top of an empty cliff as she faced her apprentice. They were on the far side of the trench from the town of Cliffpeak Cleft, but the waters of the Anemone Way still carried the scents of coral and cultivated algae that defined it. These smells mixed with faint odors from the trench, sulfurous fumes and organic stenches from deep-sea fish, to create a bouquet that rather reminded Canyon of an ill-kept aquarium, like the one she had crashed at when she first went steady with her late ex-boyfriend, Billy. She’d heard that he’d shaped up some time after the breakup and even gone on to mentor Finn, Ooo’s new hottest hero (though he was a bit short for her taste). Was her mentoring Cragg a subconscious attempt to replicate a side of Billy she’d never gotten the chance to see? No.

“I am,” affirmed Cragg, placing her hand on her face in a gesture Canyon had told her was a salute when she asked why Canyon had kept doing it when talking to then-President Blowfish. “The merchant who identified herself as Waterlily Highschool was heading along this path when I was forced to part ways with her, for smonster-related reasons.”

“Stop calling them smonsters.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, if she did, she’s fast,” reasoned Canyon. She stuck out her hand over the edge of the chasm, feeling a faint downdraft. “With all the turbulence around here, anyone towing a cart that big would have to make a pit stop once they reached the edge of the cliffs. Visibility’s good here; we’d still be able to see her, even if she were a speck in the distance.”

“Perhaps she’s got somewhere to be in a hurry,” Cragg suggested. “Like a friend’s birthday party, or… I dunno, I’m fourteen, my frame of reference for ‘places one would need to be in a hurry’ is a tide pool.”

“I guess.” Canyon took out a paper map and glanced at it for a moment, before it broke apart from the force of the undersea current they were standing in and scattered. “It didn’t look like there was much in the way of places to go in this direction,” she said, “at least nearby. Though I didn’t get much of a chance to look just now.”

Cragg tilted her head, the green streaks in her hair bobbing back and forth. “That’s a pretty weird thing to say, chief. And, I mean, I should know about weird.” She smiled proudly and pointed at herself as she said that. “But I mean, is this leading somewhere?”

Canyon reached out again, feeling the water flow past her fingers. “Currents don’t have a destination. There is no start or stop, merely areas where they converge and diverge. One clownfish salesman acting strangely isn’t in and of itself strange. I’m merely wondering if they’re here for the same reason we are.”

“You mean the smonsters,” said Cragg.

“I have never once meant the ‘smonsers’, and I hope I never will. I’m just considering every possibility, like maybe…” Canyon thought for a second. “She’s a salesman… maybe she hoped to sell her wares to the  _ dust devils?” _ She put extra emphasis on the last two words.

“That’s a stupid theory.” Which was not surprising; she might have come up with a better one had she thought for  _ two _ seconds instead. “It makes more sense for her to have been  _ attacked _ by the smonsters.”

Canyon snapped her fingers. “Yes, that. I was getting around to that possibility.”

A beat.

“We should probably go help her.”

They swam back over the trench, fighting against the current as they scanned the infinite seascape below for any sign of a besieged clownfish or an army of swirling malevolent dust. Canyon’s ears twitched as she sifted through the din of the wind under waves and the ambient echoes of distant sea beasts, one of which sounded both too draconic and too nearby for her liking. She couldn’t let herself worry about too many things at once, though. An innocent merchant might have been under attack at that very moment.

* * *

Waterlily Highschool was not, as it turned out, under attack, by smonsters or otherwise. She had dove down into the abyss tugging her cart of wares, on the lookout for customers. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was down here, if she were to be honest with herself, and she rarely was. It was cold and dark and smelly and a fourth uncomfortable sensation incomprehensible to humanoids which related to electric fields. Even so, she was perfectly alright, so she pressed onward.

She had a knack for sniffing out potential customers, and her instincts told her she’d find some here. Well, her instincts and a decrepit selkie hag who appeared in a cosmic owl dream to give her a haunting premonition, but a good salesfish knew not to second-guess a valuable lead, and  _ everyone _ knew not to argue with the owl. The eerie incandescence of the distant cliffs stirring up recent memories of an ancient time where death flowed through the sea like brackish sludge simply meant she was on the right track.

A loud, low cry tore through the sea, compelling her to stop out of fear. It sounded like some sort of large serpentine sea creature which technically wasn’t a sea serpent. She felt her cart of valuables collide with her tailfin as she drew to a halt, pushing her forward as if it were begging her to sell its contents faster. It would have to hold its flim-flamming seahorses.

What was that, in the distance? Could it be a glint of something noteworthy? In these waters? Unlikely but possible. Still, she never turned down a potential mark she meant customer, not even if she only had reason to believe there would be one on account of nightmare selkies. She began swimming in that direction, somewhat cautiously so as to avoid catching the attention of whatever threat that water elemental had been so shivered about. She was gung-ho, of course, but she wasn’t entirely without caution. Only mostly. No dosh without danger, after all.

As she got closer, she tried to make out what species her new customers were. They had long bodies with some sort of desaturated yellowish-brown coloration she couldn’t make out from this distance, and they moved through the water inelegantly with misshapen fins. She wasn’t quite sure what they were. They were like dogfish, only less fishlike.

On second thought, they didn’t look like they were carrying anything with them, so they’d probably make poor customers. She turned tail and swam deeper into the darkness before they could notice her.

* * *

“So, do you think they’re doing alright?” wondered Finn as he scoured the ground for any chips of the quartz crystals that might be salvageable. It was tough work determining which rocks were quartz and which were igneous deposits, since he couldn’t rely on touch through the suit and the activity had stirred up a not insignificant amount of dust on the ocean floor, but it was no harder than picking out the right spices from his spice rack back home. “They’ve probably found a whole bunch of crystals and are already on their way back.”

“Finn!” Macy snapped over the radio. “Meditative chores are only meditative if you focus solely on the chore.” Her chore just so happened to be standing on a nearby ledge and directing the others in the mind-clearing exercises.

“What’s this about crystals and chores?” came Banana Man’s crackly voice from all the way back in the submarine.

“Go back to your videos, Banana Man,” insisted Macy.

“Okay.”

“Don’t freak out about it,” said Beau. For eir chore, e was going over the sealing sigil piece by piece and copying it down in the notebook e’d smuggled in eir helmet, so that it could be referenced later if need be. After spending years transcribing the incomprehensible scribblings that had apparently passed for formulae in Ron James’s dearly missed mind, e was pretty good at this. “I mean, in all likelihood we’re gonna release an ancient chaotic evil that’ll wreck all of civilization, but you’re not gonna help anyone out by—”

_ “Meditative!” _ Macy repeated. “I do declare, y’all have the attention span of a Robin, and I don’t mean the bird kind. Why can’t you be more like Peace Master?”

The exorcist, whose chore was to stand watch atop the volcano, did not say anything. He merely held up a hand in an OK sign.

“That’s hardly fair,” moaned Beau. “PM’s task is to literally do nothing.”

“And you don’t see  _ him _ complaining,” said Macy.

“I—” Beau cut eirself with a sigh. E wanted to complain that it felt like the only one still here who had been directly responsible for all but two of the crystals being smashed was the only one not being punished, but e knew this wasn’t really a punishment. Besides, as e returned to eir task, e realized it was actually working. The monotony helped ground em, made em feel steadier. Here was a task e knew e could complete, one tiny piece at a time. E saw a shape, e drew a shape, rinse and repeat.

“You what?” prompted Macy.

“Ewe female lamb. Ram male lamb.”

“I’m not and I won’t, but thanks for the inaccurate observation and bizarre suggestion.”

“What?” asked the exorcist, scratching the top of his helmet in confusion as he looked up into blank nothing dotted with bioluminescence. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Macy answered truthfully. “Now stop thinking about that, and start thinking about nothing.”

Peace Master followed this paradoxical direction and resumed his simultaneous contemplation of the void which surrounded him and the existential dread it inspired. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what force had compelled him to attack his own comrade at that critical moment. He was very familiar with the fear of infinite darkness, a fear which only grew the more he learned about the horrid creatures that haunted its edges. Despite his decades of training, for a moment he had let his guard down, let that fear drive him to provocation. That moment had been too much. He knew, too, that he had long borne that rage in his heart. Though regrettable, it was the necessary drive and unavoidable result of his noble profession. In the wake of these events, he couldn’t deny that he probably bore far too much.

Finn picked up another piece of quartz crystal and set it in the pile he was gathering. Oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening oh glob what was happening he spotted another crystal. He picked it up and examined it, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a chunk of obsidian. Half his body was burning through his candy pressure suit as horrid arms of magma pinned him in place. He swept his hand across the sea floor to see if it encountered any resistance. Old memories threatened to resurface in his mind, and he couldn’t bear to look at them. Ah, he’d found another quartz piece.

“Finn!” Macy’s voice shouted, peaking, in his ear. “You’re slowing down. Are you getting dragged under by bad thoughts?”

“Nothing I can’t ignore. I started heroing younger than you did, so I’ve had a lot of practice ignoring bad thoughts.”

There was a burst of crackling noise that was the best the radio could make of her clucking in disapproval. “We want meta station, not repression. I think this is the part where Dr. Upe would tell me to talk to xyr real candid. So, uh, do that I guess.”

“Math.” He closed his eyes and allowed those intrusive thoughts to surface, but while he could remember thinking those thoughts, the thoughts themselves eluded him. “I don’t know if I can. Whenever I try to focus on those thoughts, they slip away like—”

“I’m sorry,” PM interrupted, “but Macadamia, did you just say  _ real candid? _ Unironically? That is absolutely adorable.”

“Hey!” Macy protested. “That’s none of your beeswax, you calabash.”

“Incredible. You sound  _ exactly _ like my granddaughter’s friends. You’re making me want to pick you up after the school dance, grab some ice cream, and then run an introductory module for Mushrooms & Magi.”

Macy blushed so hard she was sure it must be visible from the ocean surface. “I’m not young enough to be your — wait, you head-honcho for M&M? Could I take you up on that later?”

Beau piped in before the exorcist could answer. “Hey, Macy, didn’t you say you were supposed to be directing us or something?”

“Huh?” She skilted for a moment, then stood up straight at a normal speed (which relative to all the other body language in the conversation was blindingly fast). “Right. Let’s focus on focusing, people. And that means no snarky comments about why it was a bad idea to leave the teenager in charge of calming everyone down.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Beau lied.

“This ocean wants us tense,” Macy continued, ignoring the interruption. “It wants us fearful, trepidatious, on edge. It wants us to lash out at each other and act in panic, so that we keep making mistakes. Well, I for one say we won’t let it!”

PM raised a finger as if teaching a lesson, even though nobody he was talking to was looking up to see the gesture. “Strictly speaking, the ocean doesn’t possess a malevolent will, and personifying it as such can be dangerous as it attracts spirits of contention and may provide openings for powerful demons to actually make that misconception true, but I concede the point.”

“Concede nothing!” shouted Macy with viral fervor. “Give no ground. Who are we to let our fears control us? We’re  _ adventurers, _ for math’s sake! We, each and every one of us, have been through worse than a little soul-crushing darkness. As long as we know that, we can definitely find the patience to weather these emotions with clear minds. If you need something to focus on, focus on that fact.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Finn. “I’ve got it.”

“See? I knew that with a little push, you’d be able to get a handle on those fears. Spill.”

“No, that’s not it. I just got your and Beau’s joke from earlier.” He chuckled. “Ram male lamb. Comedy gold.”

Peace Master cleared his throat. “I still don’t get it.”

* * *

“That’s weird,” said Robin. Zhe and Jake were swimming diagonally upward, per what vague instruction they’d garnered from the conversation before they left. Jake had taken the lead, returning to his normal off-yellow color even as Robin preemptively desaturated zhirself. Both of them had morphed somewhat fishlike forms, though really Robin was following Jake’s lead in this respect too. Jake claimed that he was tracking the emotions of the dissolved mineral dust in the water to locate the Anemone Way current, and thus the town of Cliffpeak Cleft. Robin thought that story sounded like a cauldron of slag, but zhe wasn’t one to look a horse’s gift in the mouth (or a dog’s treat in the muzzle).

“What’s weird?” asked Jake.

“I dunno. I forgot what I was gonna say.”

“That  _ is _ weird,” Jake agreed. “Don’t worry, I do that sorta thing all the time.”

“You forget what I was gonna say all the time?”

“Yep. It’s terribly irresponsible of me. Oh, hey, we’re here.”

They were, indeed, there. Without either of them noticing before, the two had reached the peak of the cliffs and now swam before the town of Cliffpeak Cleft. It was a modest town, certainly much smaller than Jugland Mesa or the Candy Kingdom, but larger than Stupendous Hal’s Life-Sized Miniature Golf & Oversized Carnival. It had the vague shape of a miniaturized modern city, but all of the buildings were made out of enormous coral. The streets were tall and unpaved, lit by lamps which resembled anglerfish lures just a bit too much for comfort. There was a faint smell of petrichor in the air, whose origin the dogs did not yet know, but Jake could sense the aroma’s malice.

“Well, whaddaya know?” said Jake. “Seems that was super-duper easy, even though Banana Man was so rude as to be out of radio range for giving us directions.”

“That was awful inconsiderate of him,” Robin agreed, nodding zhir head inside zhir helmet. Zhe turned to face zhir great-grandpa. “So, uh, what now?”

Jake spawned a tiny pair of arms behind his ears to shrug with. “I guess we ask around to see if anyone sells crystals. Do we know what kinda crystals we're looking for?”

“I'll know it when we see it.”

“Ain't your vision kinda bad or something cuzza your eyes are rubies?”

“Yessiree.”

“This was a well-thought-out plan.”

They swam up to the edge of the cliff and then shifted back to their usual dog forms (though Jake's barely resembled a dog and Robin's even less so). There was no practical reason for this; they just felt more comfortable with their feet on solid ground, so to speak. Of course, since the town was mostly populated by fish, the ground wasn't designed to be comfortable to stand on, but the current that constantly whistled through the streets kept it only somewhat jagged and rocky.

Immediately, a blobfish mermaid swam up to them, holding a large chunk of coral exoskeleton that looked like she’d broken it off a parapet. “Aight, ya grody vaders,” she said, her voice harsh. “If ya wanna come in here ‘n muck up our pretty OK city, I ain’t gonna flip over twice.”

Robin cocked zhir head. “If you flip over twice, isn’t that just a barrel roll?” Zhe conjured a tiny image of a dolphin-like aquatic mammal doing just that, for demonstration porpoises.

“Don’t play games with me,” she snapped. “I’ve gotcher numbers. This is phase two of the invasion, where ya get how to turn your weirdo gas bods into peopleoid forms. In phase three ya gonna start imitating and replacing us, and that ain’t natchy, so I’ma have to stop ya right there before ya get your reinforcements.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Jake held up a paw, which morphed into a sign reading, “Wait.” “You must have us confused with someone else. We don’t got gas bods. We’ve just got normal shapeshifting bods.” Robin nodded in agreement.

The mermaid poked Jake’s arm, feeling its squishiness to confirm he wasn’t a monster. She poked it again with her other hand, because it was fun. “KK, I’ll believe ya for now.” A beat. “Hold up, you’re Jake the Dog, aintcha?”

“Sure am.” The corner of his lip curled up into a smile. “I assume my reputation precedes me?”

“Eh. Mostly it’s just that your daughter’s my favorite actress. But IIRC you’re a PI, right?”

Jake shook his head. “Sadly, I’m no good at following directions, so contract work’s off the table. No, I’m an adventurer by trade, a galavanting knight-errant of the highest caliber.” Robin conjured an illusory trumpet and some fanfare to punctuate the point.

“Weirdo. Anyway, I assume you’re here to help out with the weird smoke monster invasion that I accidentally accused you of being a part of.”

“No,” said Robin, “we’re just here to shop. This town got a crystal store?”

“That flotsam? LOL, nope. We’ve got two kindsa stores here — the ones for groceries, and the ones for tourists. Ain’t nobody peddling that pseudoscience. Everyone knows crystals aren’t magic.”

Robin, who was one-quarter magic crystal spirit, nodded in agreement. “Well, thanks anyway!”

As the mermaid swam away, Jake crossed his arms. “That didn’t exactly go as planned.”

“It didn’t,” Robin agreed, though zhe didn’t sound too disappointed. “I guess it’s time for plan B.”

“We had a plan B?” asked Jake.

_ “I _ had a plan B. It involves interrogating shopkeepers until they tell us where the black market distributors are. There’s  _ always _ a black market. Then we find whoever in the black market’s selling crystals, an’ we steal ‘em.”

Jake looked at Robin, eyebrow raised. “How long have you had that plan in mind, exactly?”

Zhe winked. “I know a thing or two about mercantilism. But, ah, should we be worried about the monsters that merdude mentioned?”

“Robin, if I worried about every monster everywhere, I’d get even less sleep than usual!” And the two dissolved into awkward, stilted laughter together, until a smonster materialized between them and raised an ax-bladed tentacle toward Jake’s helmet.

* * *

Finn placed one last piece of quartz on top of the pile he’d collected. It wasn’t much, and none of it would be large enough to matter, but at least he wouldn’t be littering now. “Done,” he announced. He moved to wipe the effort sweat off his brow, but since he was still in the pressure suit, the motion accomplished nothing.

“Yeah, congrats,” muttered Beau, still sketching. “You think you could help me out here?”

“How?”

A beat.

Macy cleared her throat, causing another burst of static over the radio. “Very good. Now that that’s done, your mind is probably in a steadier place. Do you think you can verbalize your fears now?”

“Way ahead of you.” Finn had closed his eyes once more, calling to mind that vault in which he had once stored all his worst thoughts. It now stood in disrepair, its door swinging on hinges in desperate need of oiling. Still, that place was where the concentration of his negative emotions was thickest and dankest. Metaphorically.

He took a step inside and looked around. The place was wetter than he remembered. “It’s wet,” he said in the real world. He heard Macy’s confused reply, acknowledged it, but remained focused on the task at hand. The room was getting hotter now.

He continued speaking. “I can see it before me,” he said. It looked just as it did in the real world, even though he knew it had been different when the memory it was referencing had been made. “The volcano, active. Arms reaching out. But the arms aren’t connected to the volcano, they’re coming from far away. Is this… is this a prophecy dream?”

“You know it isn’t,” chided Macy, though the question did get her to wondering if a PTSD nightmare  _ could _ double as a vision from the Cosmic Owl. She hoped not.

Finn reached out to touch one of the hands; it vanished, leaving a sensation so cold it burned. “No, you’re right,” he said; “this isn’t something that happened, nor will happen. I know it can’t. But it’s like some part of my brain is stuck on that fight with Magolith and replaying scenarios where I lose. It’s got this recording of his arms grappling me, making me helpless, and it’s played on loop so many times that it’s putting it anywhere there’s water.”

He looked down at himself. He was wearing a mixture of Prubs and Banana Man’s suits, and based on the clarity with which he could see it, he had no helmet on. He tried to speak, but his lungs filled with imaginary water, until he leapt to the surface of the ocean and gasped for air. “I can’t stop imagining every way this could go wrong,” he sputtered. “But that kind of fear is something I’m used to. It’s all too — wait.”

A beat.

“Um, Macy, you’re supposed to prompt me with, ‘what is it?’”

“Sorry about that,” Macy apologized. “What is it?”

“Thank you.” Finn opened his eyes, which he just now realized looking in his helmet’s glass reflection had faint bags under them. “It’s too familiar, which is the problem. Jake was right on the money. I’ve gotten loads of trauma in the past, but I’m having trouble dealing with this ocean trauma specifically  _ because _ I thought I’d dealt with it when the Grass Sword cut out my Fear Feaster.” As if remembering that horrid creature that had preyed upon his thalassophobia as a child, his belly rumbled.

“Wait, you had a fear feaster?” asked Beau, cutting in. “As in, past tense? That’s pretty unusual, though I suppose Peace Master would know better than I. PM?”

When the exorcist didn’t respond, they looked up, only to see him still faithfully scanning the subnautical sky on watch duty. “PM?” Macy repeated. “You still good there? Want to go over the materialization exercise again?”

Peace Master held up a finger to call for silence. After a moment, he lowered it, then whispered hoarsely, “Something.”

“Something?” Macy spoke with the inflection of a teenager attempting to emulate a private investigator who falsely believed herself to be the protagonist of a gritty noir mystery. “Care to enlighten us?”

“I see something,” said PM. “Small, but it’s hard to make out how many, and I’m pretty sure some of them are coming our way.”

That snapped everyone to attention. Finn nearly kicked over his quartz pile as he began looking every which way. “Where from?” he asked. “Which direction?”

Macy was also looking around, but more slowly, and with a looked of dawning horror on her face. “All of them,” she answered. “They’re coming from all of them.”

Finn’s face fell. That was a lot of directions.

* * *

“That’s a lot of smonsters,” said Cragg.

_ Not really. _ Canyon had seen a lot of smonsters, when she’d come here all those years ago and helped seal the waking Magolith. Back then, the army of dust devils had seemed truly endless, coming out of every crevice in the rock faces to lash out with their vaporous tendrils. This one, which was just now diffusing into the dark crevice, could barely number in the thousands — a meager pittance compared to what she had been made to fight before.

That thought, she didn’t want to make her apprentice feel inadequate. “Sure are,” she agreed, taking out her quadrident and twirling it as a dramatic flourish. She called her quadrident the War Fork because it was more humiliating to be defeated by a weapon named after a serving utensil. “We’ve got quite the reception, I’d say. These guys must be pumped to see us if they’re rolling out the carpet.”

Cragg turned one of her hands into a hammer and punched it into her other, which would have made a satisfying slap had she not been a being made of water under water. “Let’s beat ‘em up.”

“Hold.” Cragg held the blunt end of the War Fork in front of Cragg like a seatbelt, arresting her movement. “Don’t go rushing into danger without thinking. As fun as being in danger is, innocent people always have to come first.”

“Um, yeah,” said Cragg. “The clownfish, remember? That’s why we were coming here.”

Canyon sighed. “If only it were that simple. Giant hordes of monsters don’t materialize for no reason.”

“You mean  _ smonst—” _

“The town!” Canyon pointed in the direction of Cliffpeak Cleft. “Your secret technique should be enough to get you there on time, and I’m sure you can handle that front by yourself. I’ll head down to deal with the army, the clownfish, and letting our friends down below know what’s happening.”

Cragg spared a moment to look up admiring at her master, then blasted off against the current. One thing she respected about Canyon was her ability to insightfully divide the labor between the two of them.

By the time Cragg reached the village, she could tell she probably wasn’t needed here, either, which was fine. Before the village was even in sight, she spied a giant yellow blob with tentacles of its own reaching out to swipe at the smonsters that peppered it like fleas on some sort of animal that got fleas. As she got closer, she realized it was probably just Jake, saving the day with his ridiculous overpowered shapeshifting powers. Cragg couldn’t help but be a little jealous;  _ she _ wanted to save the day with her ridiculous overpowered shapeshifting powers.

Green wasn’t a good look on her outside of her hair, so she swallowed her pride and hailed him. “Yo, Jake,” she called, waving to him as she spread her limbs to slow down. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The wall of yellow flesh coalesced into a dog shape, with spindly tree-like arms still extended outwards to continue the battle. Behind Jake’s emerging, glass-helmeted head, Cragg could see that there were still a fair amount of smonsters avoiding his attacks. There was a another dog back there, blasting away at them with some sort of rainbow sprinkle magic, but if she’d ever met that pup (and she had on multiple occasions), she didn’t recall. “Oh, Cragg!” exclaimed Jake, his voice tinny and distant inside his helmet. “Hey, thanks for the assist with the dragon back there.”

“Assist? That was  _ all _ me, and you—”

“Move it along!” Robin shouted. The combination of distance and glass ought to have made zhir voice inaudible, but some sort of magic was projecting it. “Kinda busy here, so let’s not get too distracted.”  _ This must be how everyone around me feels all the time. _

“Ah, yes,” said Cragg, “the smonster invasion. I was just coming over to help with that.”

“We’ve probably got this,” Jake assured her. “I think, anyway. But we really should get back down to our friends below once the town is secure; they may need backup if they’re under attack about two hundred times worse than we are.” A smonster punched Robin in the kidney.

“Canyon’s already on her way down there. She’ll be with them as soon as she deals with the traveling salesman goldfish.”

Robin turned around, zhir attention piqued. “Did you say traveling sales—” Zhe paused to morph zhir back half into a donkey’s and kick a smonster into oblivion — “man?”

“Goldfish,” Cragg agreed. “They seemed really insistent on coming here. Tell you the truth, I think they might be a little reckless.”

“Is it possible,” Robin continued, “that the thing they were traveling selling was crystals?”

“Could be,” she said with a shrug.

“That’s our best lead,” said Jake, retracting his arms. “We’d better go catch them. What direction did they go?”

Cragg pointed down. “Don’t worry, I can handle the rest of these smozos.”

“What’s a smozo?” asked Robin.

“Smonster plus bozo.”

“What’s a smonster?”

“Smoke plus monster.”

Robin contemplated this as a monster charged zhir. It changed its claws into sledgehammers, preparing to crack zhir helmet. Zhe reached out and nonchalantly punched it into oblivion. “But we’re underwater.”

“It’s a metaphor,” groaned Cragg. “I don’t have time to explain it.”

Jake suddenly grabbed onto Robin. “You’re right, good luck kicking evil butts, bye!” Before either of the others could respond, he leapt over the abyss, then shapeshifted into an enormous weight and started plummeting.

“What was that about?” asked Robin, using the radio line now.

“I just remembered an old metaphor PB used to say sometimes: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

After a moment, it was Robin’s turn to go wide-eyed in realization. “We should have worried about that invasion.”

* * *

Beau wasn’t worried. A few mutterings, a bolt of blue light that illuminated the canopy of grey, and suddenly e was holding an oversized ethereal shovel. The beam of light briefly illuminated a massive sheet of smonsters with writhing, amorphous forms descending toward the party from up above. They were approaching fast, but after all the directionless paranoia that had been seeping into Beau’s psyche, e was just glad to have somewhere to direct it. “Come and get me, you vaporous vagabonds,” e declared. Of course, only the others with radios could hear em, so it was a moot threat.

Finn went to draw Shark’s Tooth from its belt-mounted sheath, but Peace Master was the first into action. He did quite the impressive vertical leap off his perch atop the volcano, before reaching into his own toolbelt to whip out some instrument of justice. Unfortunately, unlike Finn, he didn’t have any equipment that could survive the immense pressures of the ocean floor, so his hand grasped at empty water.

Macy ran forward to catch him, but she wasn’t used to moving fast in a bulky suit. She tripped over her own legs and rolled several meters before being stopped by Beau’s foot. Finn caught up to PM first, leaping dramatically over the mini-volcano’s caldera to catch him. On his way down, he twisted around and swung Shark’s Tooth, sending out a massive shockwave, before he landed hard on the ground and the exorcist on top of him.

Beau barely wasted a moment helping Macy up before launching eir next attack. Pushing off the ground with the handle of eir shovel, e launched into the water above, getting close enough that e was able to make out the individual forms of the smonsters eir suit’s headlamp shone on. E threw his shovel at them, dissipating their forms, but there were so many behind them that it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Still, this was just testing the waters, so to speak.

It was finally Macy’s time to shine, she hoped. She leapt up to try and catch Beau as e was falling, but e must have misinterpreted this gesture. When she got near em, e took her outstretched hand, twisted, and flung her up higher.  _ What the Glob was that for? _

Finn pushed PM off of himself and sat up on time to see Beau land in a superhero pose, which must have been killer on eir weak wizardly knees. He looked at Shark’s Tooth, which had been broken in half in the landing; he held the ‘handle’ in his hand, while the ‘blade’ remained on the ground behind him (though the sword normally lacked a clear delineation between blade and handle). That was mildly inconvenient.

“Yo, Finn?” asked Beau, snapping er fingers to instantly re-summon eir shovel. “I right in assuming these mooks’re what you fought the first time ‘round?”

“Uh, uh…” Finn had to take a moment to process the question, even though it wasn’t particularly complicated. His mind was a mess. “Yeah, they—”

“How do we beat them?”

Finn considered this. “You’d want to scatter their bodies; I think that’s what worked before. But that still lets them come back eventually. Maybe if you did the opposite and compressed them really hard into, like, some sort of sediment-based rock? If there’s even a name for such a thing. Or maybe that would just make them into rock monsters. It’s possible they’re ghosts, in which case I could probably use the Night Sword, but that would release an ancient evil with control over the very mantle beneath us and which might eventually gain enough power to destroy large chunks of the planet. Decisions, decisions.”

By this point, Peace Master had stood up of his own accord and had picked up the broken-off blade of Shark’s Tooth. “Macy, catch!” he said, throwing it up toward where Beau kept his light focused on the nut. “Focus on dissolving. We only need a temporary solution, anyway. And they’re not ghosts.” He tapped the side of his helmet where his multi-tiered monocle was somewhat visible behind the smudge. “I’d know if they were.”

At this point, Macy had almost half regained something resembling an understanding of where she was in physical space and what she was doing there. At the very least, it was enough for her to catch the end of Shark’s Tooth as it was sent flying toward her. IMmediately after this, a ceiling of smonsters crashed onto her from above (the place where ceilings usually are). They slammed into her suit, roping her limbs into their fierce downward charge, all the while somehow generating a low, haunting melody that Macy couldn’t hear but felt reverberating in her shell.

She focused on PM’s voice over the radio. Gripping the sword piece so tightly she could almost feel it through the suit, she forcefully yanked one arm and one leg free and twisted the others. It took more strength than she knew she had, but she managed to start spinning, getting angular momentum from Gob knew whence. She extended her sword arm, becoming the world’s twelfth deadliest spinning top as she cut the aeriform attackers to ribbons. Her mind drifted back to the last time she’d used this move, fighting off the Rhodonite Ruffians at her thirteenth birthday party. This vision she did not fight. She relished it.

Finn relished nothing. He stood, holding the already-regenerating Shark’s Blade in two trembling hands. Around him, his allies were all literally leaping into action to fend off the invasion of the smonsters. He ought to be with them; he knew that much. Yet a cold hand gripped him, smashing him down with the wet and the dark and the lonely. His arms felt so heavy he could scarcely tell which was metallic.

In that moment he heard a voice, sourceless yet clearly coming from directly in front of him. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in decades, not even in his nightmares, though not one he could ever forget. As it spoke, he thought he could see the faint visage of its speaker — a being of smoke and shadow, which was totally different from the smonsters, come  _ on. _

“You thought you could outgrow me,” it spoke, its voice low and raspy like some great rattlesnake’s tail. “Yet here you are, trembling like a weak pathetic child, like before. It was only ever a matter of time. After all, I’m as stubborn as resilient as you must have been to set foot down here.”

“Sh-shut it, Fear Feaster,” Finn said, not thinking to turn on the radio even if his hands would have been able to obey. “I’ve b-beat you before, and I’ll b-beat you again.”

“Ahahahaha!” With each laugh, a shard of ice embedded itself in Finn’s lungs. “Clearly you haven’t. I’ll give you your body back, since I don’t want you to get us both killed. But I want you to know: You will never, ever escape me.”

With that, the horrid presence didn’t fade exactly, but it did do as it promised. Finn felt the burning rush of adrenaline course through his blood to thaw his fear. Gripping what was left of Shark’s Tooth like a baton, he assumed a crouching position. He had no sword, but he must fight.

He jumped.

* * *

Waterlily Highschool was being attacked by smonsters. The things had appeared from the darkness and begun charging toward the cart, seemingly with the intent to smash it to splinters. Their first few slams had no effect, with them poofing themselves out of existence upon ramming into the heavy tarp which Lily had draped over the cart to protect her wares from weather damage and random curses. Even so, each impact rocked her to her fish bones, which she probably had but I’m not an ichthyologist. The point is, despite her misplaced bravado, she was starting to get worried.

Before this first reasonable reaction had a chance to manifest, she was startled to stillness as a bolt of blue flew right past her ear, followed by a gust of fresh water. Floating next to her was a tall humanoid with long, literally flowing hair and an enormous fork. She swung the fork in a wide arc, its handle nearly clipping Lily’s fins; this one swift motion cut through about nine or ten smonsters, dissolving them instantly.

“Whoa, nelly!” exclaimed Lily, recoiling and hugging tight to her cart. “Be careful with that thing, eh? You could seriously hurt something.”

Canyon twirled the fork as she regained her bearings, creating a vortex which destroyed another couple smonsters, before looking back at Lily with an annoyed expression. “You’re the traveling salesfush, huh? You don’t have a very good self-preservation instinct if you’ve gotten yourself this out of your depth.”

Lily adjusted the tarp on the cart, making sure it hung evenly on all sides, flinching as Canyon lunged toward her to stab another monster into oblivion. “Hey,” said Lily, “all I’m saying is you break it you buy it.”

“I’ll put it on my tab if it comes to that.”

“Just go!” Canyon pointed upward with the War Fork. “I’ve got a lot to worry about, and I’d rather not have your life be one of them.”

“Shouldn’t I stick close to you if I want to be safe?”

As if in rebuttal, a swirling mass of ephemeral claws came spiraling out of the darkness in a giant drill. Canyon spun her fork to cancel out the movement, then swung it through the attackers’ exposed bodies, dispelling them. “Not really, no,” she said. “Though if you dove down here recklessly, I have to suspect this might be your speed anyway.”

“Eh, not really. I doubt these bozos are gonna be very interested in perusing my extensive wares. I’ll go.”

She went, pulling her cart back up through the darkness as smonsters rushed past her to join the action. There must have been something particularly interesting about that enormous badass fighter lady, but whatever it was, Lily couldn’t see it. Maybe she was good at salvage appraisal or something. You could never go wrong knowing a bit of salvage appraisal. In fact, Lily thought she should really get around to reading that salvage appraisal handbook she’d received last Yulemas.

After what felt like three, maybe three and a half minutes, Lily saw something familiar. It was those non-fish dogfish from before! Except, hold on, now she remembered what the word for that was. Canines. She swam up to the canines, who swam down to meet her. One was large and yellow, one was long and striped, and both wore ridiculous spherical helmets and nothing else. Up close, she wasn’t sure how she’d ever mistaken them for viable customers, even from a distance in the dark. Perhaps the prophecy that she’d make a good sale here today was false after all.

“Hey, there,” said Robin (there’s literally no reason for me to be coy). “You wouldn’t happen to know where we can find a magical crystal salesfish in this monster-infested abyss, would you?”

“I would, as a matter of fact.”

“Great! Where’s that?”

“Just keep going about eight or nine fins.”

“They measure distance with fins instead of feet down here,” Jake explained.

Robin turned zhir body into a question mark. “But we don’t use feet, we use meters.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Heh. Well I guess it’s just stupid and doesn’t make sense, then.”

Lily somehow yanked the tarp off the cart, revealing pyramidally stacked shelves and boxes of all variety of crystal. “The only thing that’s stupid and doesn’t make sense is these deals!” she exclaimed. “If you’re looking for crystals, then I’ve come to the right place, i.e. you. We’ve got quartzes, feldspars, corundums; you name it, we’ve got it. And I tell you, with the degree of purity and magical potency of these here gems, I’d be crazy to sell you them for anything less than top market value — so it’s lucky for you that I am!” A beat. “Hold on, you do got money, right?”

Robin nodded. “Uh, yeah, hold on.” Zhe plunged a paw into a fold in zhir skin and pulled out a waterproof wallet. A moth flew out and drowned. Zhe reached into the wallet and pulled out some bills in individual plastic bags. “Thanks for keeping these warm, moth,” zhe said. “Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

Jake stretched himself into an orb around them all, keeping his helmeted head on the inside. “I’ll protect us like a papa eggshell while you two do your thing,” he promised. “Wouldn’t want one of those weird shapeshifting blob things to come in here and smash the all-important crystals right when we’re moments away from success  _ twice, _ hee haw hee haw hee.”

“…right.” Robin focused zhir ruby peepers on the assortment of gems, some of which were also rubies. Zhir horn glowed with magic, and zhir eyes flashed as zhe examined the magic that was reflected back. “Okay then. Let’s negotiate.”

* * *

Macy’s heart raced like an excited guitarist playing a war hymn as she skimmed through the forest of smonsters. All around her, the ground was ne’er in her sight, try as she might. The monsters pressed her tight, piling atop her as they tried to chop her legs off her bod, but she gave no quarter. Her sword butt was no more, but she used a shovel’s handle as a rod, a weapon she didn’t know, but she hit enough of the smonsters to blow them away.

Thankfully, Jake’s massive yellow fist slammed down next to her, knocking her out other battle rhythm and startling her so hard she dropped the shovel, which scattered like a monster when it hit the ocean floor. “I’m home,” he lilted melodically; the radio managed to preserve his singing quality remarkably well. “I’ve brought groceries and butt-whooping.”

_ “I _ brought groceries,” Robin corrected, zapping a group of smonsters into oblivion with a bolt of rainbow sprinkle magic and handing a quartz crystal to Beau, who had been facing that group down. Next to zhir, the newly-arrived Canyon launched an invisible stream of water to destroy a circle of smonsters that had been gathering around Peace Master.

“Cost me a whole bunch of very pretty pennies,” Robin added, despite my top-notch negotiating skills.”

“I’ll pay ya back,” promised Beau, the delight and relief apparent in eir voice as e took the gem over to the geode. “I never leave a debt outstanding, as long as—”

Peace Master, who was fighting back-to-back with Finn using nunchucks of holy golden light, took a break after popping a few smonsters to chime in. “You okay there, Rhombeaufortchamp?” he inquired. “You cut off there. Did you die mid-sentence?”

“—orry.” Beau’s voice cut back in with a burst of static. “Just had to vent a little, get some words out of my system that I didn’t want to be the one to teach little Macadamia.”

“I’m not…” Macy sighed. “Oh, forget it, that gag’s been run so far into the ground it’s probably a part of Magolith by now.”

“As shall we all,” said Beau. “The crystal’s a dud.”

“What‽” Robin shrieked.

“It’s got the right treatment to hold magic, which is probably why you made the mistake of purchasing it, but it’s just sorta gunked up with garbage energy. This thing’s completely useless for our purposes. I’m sorry to say, Robin, but you’ve been had.”

For a moment zhe pawed silently at the place in zhir hip where zhe stored zhir now-lighter wallet. Then zhe began yelling into the radio, forgetting not to turn it on, and taught Macy several fascinating new words.

* * *

Waterlily Highschool placed the tarp back on her cart and swam back up to the surface of the trench. She rejoined with the Anemone Way current and began riding it, away from the trench and the smonsters and the town of Cliffpeak Cleft. All in all, despite some convolution, today had been a productive day. She had been right to trust her premonition dream. It had led her directly to a perfectly desperate mark, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No commentary this time. Figure it out yourself. 
> 
> Not that it matters, but here's the preview (uploaded the day of the chapter being previewed going up):
> 
> Then came a pound resounding from beneath the Earth, like all the world was a drum and the beast below its player.


	7. Silt and Sulfur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ancient terror rises.
> 
> Part 6 of 8-parter “Below”; chapter 25 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter's going up on time for the first time in over two months. Sorry for breaking tradition there. But for real, I think I have a system worked out that should prevent that in the future, but I'm not yet sure if it works since I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. I'll let you know next update.
> 
> Also to be announced then will be the next bonus story! It was a bit of a last-minute decision, relatively speaking, and it's definitely different from the previous ones, but that's the point, after all. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed coming up with it, as always.
> 
> Your discussion prompt this time is: What's your favorite fun fact about household pets and technology?

“Uh, what now?”

Those words echoed in Finn’s mind. Fear had been joined by despair and disappointment, until the whole slurry had mixed together into a bitter taste like bile. Jake’s question hadn’t been directed at him specifically, but he focused on it anyway, feeling compelled to answer as the group’s resident knight. He could vaguely hear the others — mostly Beau — attempting to provide their own answers, haggling with the reality of the situation as if there could be a way to salvage it. These useless words blurred in his ears. He couldn’t let himself get distracted. He had to prioritize.

When he gave his answer, there was too much radio chatter for anyone to hear him. He said it again, louder; it was still indistinct, but it got the others to quiet down. Finally, for the third time, he stated the course of action he knew to be necessary. “Get to the ship,” he said.

“No, we need to stay here,” argued Beau. “We didn’t come all this way to retreat at the first, second, or even third setback.” But the others knew Finn’s track record of saving the world from existential threats gave him seniority in this situation. They had already begun to retreat back in the direction of the submarine, as hastily as they could manage.

Robin headed up the party, shooting zhir colorful energy blasts ahead of the group to dissipate smonsters. Still, zhe could already tell this solution wouldn’t work forever. Until now, they had been pathetically easy to destroy. They still were, but they seemed to be becoming a bit more persistent. The ones directly in the path of zhir blasts were destroyed almost instantaneously, of course, but the radius of dissipation around them was getting smaller and smaller. Whether there were more of them or they were getting stronger with time, zhe couldn’t tell. That was future Robin’s problem, and future Robin was looking ever more threateningly close to present Robin.

Once Beau realized e was being ignored and joined up with the group, Jake headed up the rear, expanding one of his arms into a mobile shield to protect them from divebombing assailants. The attacks, which had very little force behind them, were easy to ignore at first, especially since many had probably peeled away to chase Canyon as she headed back up to Cliffpeak Cleft. He’d faced worse, after all. As the group moved, though, the blows from above started to come in more regular intervals, landing all at once so that it began to genuinely hurt. He started using his other arm to smack these predictable attacks out of the way before they hit, but the change in the status quo still worried him.

Macy, comfortably in the middle between Beau, Peace Master, and Finn, walked with her eyes closed. She was attempting, as she had several times on this trip, to commune with the nature around here for surveillance. Under her breath, she hummed along to the sound of the crushing ocean currents and bubbling volcanic vents, but to no avail. She couldn’t sense anything. She hadn’t thought about it before, but now she worried there might have been a reason for that.

Peace Master and Beau helped guard the flanks, PM wielding Shark’s Bite since Finn’s hands were trembling too much to use it. He wasn’t a fan of wielding a cursed blade, but he wasn’t a fan of dust devils either, so it balanced out. He knew a thing or two about dust devils, though, so he knew something was wrong. “This is too easy,” he said.

Finn nodded gravely, although nobody could tell since his helmet didn’t move that much. “It won’t be for long. That’s why we need to get to the sub. Frankly, we need to get out of here and come back with fresh supplies for the magic circle doohickey.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Beau snapped. “While we’re gone, Magolith’s just gonna pop out of that volcano and wreck half the ocean before anyone can put a stop to it.”

“He won’t,” Finn assured him. “The seal has gotta have enough power to tide over for a few days while we grab what we need.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you’d be a lot more freaked out if it didn’t.”

“Okay, fine, you’re —  _ hiyah!” _ E lunged forward suddenly, wizard punching a monster that had slipped through their defenses, charging right toward Finn.  _ Specifically _ toward Finn. Beau was insulted.

Finn cracked his knuckles. “Let’s pick up the pace, people.” He ran ahead of the group and, lacking a sword, began to punch and kick until it was done. The man had some moves, carefully honed and acquired over decades of hard-earned experience. He didn’t have much in the way of formal training, of course, but he moved with his own kind of martial discipline, one which appeared wild and frenetic. Or perhaps he was simply wild, frenetic, and lucky. Either way, his additional help allowed the group to advance more quickly toward the sub as a wall of smonsters grew thicker behind them.

In the middle of the group, Macy walked sullen. She was upset that she couldn’t do more to help, despite all the help she’d provided. She wanted to be an adventurer, not a shrink. Legs moving in boring unison, she began for the fourth time to dream.

* * *

Waterlily Highschool had been getting along just fine until a stray monster had rammed into the side of her caravan, destroying itself but putting a serious crack in the material that made it up (she didn’t know what it was and she didn’t care). It seemed to her that the universe was out to get her, specifically. Had the Cosmic Owl called her here to peddle her wares so that some sort of comeuppance could be repaid for her charlatanry? Surely that must be the case. She figured it was only a matter of time before beings of ontological import took an interest in her, though she admitted she’d hoped it could be more romantic.

The universe revolving around her aside, she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it very far before that crack worsened; she’d have to head back to Cliffpeak Cleft for repairs. She seriously doubted anyone was swimming in more circles than she, and if they were, she didn’t care. Letting out a sigh, she reversed her trajectory back toward the clifftop town.

As she approached, she thought it looked foggier than usual, or perhaps smokier. That was strange, since underwater fog was as rare as Wizard City fog. As she grew closer, she realized that what she thought was smoke was actually individual smoke monsters like the ones that had been targeting her. Smoke monsters? She ought to call them smonsters. She bet she was the first to think of that.

She pressed onwards, not having any other option. Hopefully the smonsters would be too busy attacking the innocent townsfolk to bother with her. Besides, they all seemed clustered around one spot, presumably the location of some idiot hero actually attempting to fend them off. Lily just couldn’t understand that at all; this world was dangerous enough without making choices to actively make it more so. Heading into danger to make a quick buck was one thing, but doing so just to protect strangers who probably wouldn’t do the same for you?

No, that was too terrifying. Between fight or flight, she didn’t think she could pick fight if she wanted to.

Suddenly, something shifted in the great mass before her. All at once the army of smonsters began to retreat from every part of the city at once. They poured out of coral buildings like blood from stone, emerging from cracks and crevices she hadn’t even noticed before. As they did, she could finally see the figure they were fleeing from — a very smug-looking Cragg Ambrosia, her arms fused into a hammer as she twirled what looked like an uprooted street lamp between her feet.

Wait, no, that didn’t make sense. Cragg couldn’t have been what caused them to retreat; if she had been, then the retreat would have moved outwards from the center of the fighting. They fled all at once. If Lily was going to hunker down in town while her cart was being repaired, the town’s defender needed to know this.

“Hey, Cragg!” Lily called, though she knew full well she was probably out of earshot. “These smonsters are—”

The tide of retreating smonsters broke over her like wind under waves, and she realized too late that she would be afforded no immunity this time. Before she had time to react, one of them charged straight toward her, fusing two others of its kind into a bladed arm.

It swung. She was cloven in twain, killed instantly.

Cragg around, distracted momentarily from celebrating her successful repulsion of the invasion of Cliffpeak Cleft. She thought she’d heard someone call out something about smonsters? But that couldn’t be true. She’d just invented the term, after all. Must have been her imagination.

* * *

Much to Banana Man’s protestations, the crew all gathered in the airlock at once, which would have been extremely uncomfortable had Jake and Robin not been able to shrink down to just their heads. Instead, it was only  _ highly _ uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure about this,” Beau repeated, stepping out first to doof eir wetsuit. “I’ll grant you that the seal will hold for a few days, but we can’t guarantee that’ll be enough time to get what we need and come back. If the situation changes—”

“Changes to what?” Jake asked, shrinking to tiny size and holding his fishbowl helmet above his head. “Those dust devils were about as threatening as wet tissue paper. When they had attacked Cliffpeak Cleft before we got there, they didn’t even hurt no one or nothin’! They’re totally pathetic and completely harmless, more annoying than anything. They don’t have within themselves the capacity to pose a reasonable threat, to us or anyone else, without the direction of Magolith. They’re harmless, absotively and posilutely.”

Beau frowned. “If you say so. You’re the one who’s fought them before, I guess.”

Macy didn’t bother to remove her own suit. Instead, she went into the corner of the sub and sat, arms folded around her legs. She felt no adrenaline coursing through her veins. Her heart had not been caught up in a frenetic rhythm as she pushed her body to the limits. On her fingers she felt a phantom pain, from the calluses which longed for the bite a useless bowstring. She collapsed her hands together, but the only sensation was the inside of the suit.

“Nice sulking spot.” Macy looked up to see an indoor-sized Robin approaching her, fur matted, tail wrapped around zhir in a spiral like a belt worn by somebody who didn’t know what a belt was. “Mind if I join you?” The nut nodded slightly, so zhe sat down next to her.

“What,” Macy asked, as she felt the sub rumble to life beneath and around her, “you wanna sulk, too?”

“Nah. Just wanna join you.”

A beat.

Robin lit up zhir horn, and the room was plunged into darkness. The sounds of the others milling about and conversing were muffled as well, but even so, it didn’t sound like they were freaking out. Macy guessed that Robin had only darkened this particular corner, to give them some privacy. “Alright,” zhe said, “what’s on your mind?”

Macy sighed. “Well, it’s—” She cut herself off. She had been about to say something about how the stress of all this was getting to her, but that wasn’t true. She didn’t feel tense, or anxious; not anymore, at least. She felt… bored. It was a boredom she didn’t think she had the right to feel, given the circumstances, but she could hardly expect honesty from Robin if she didn’t give it in return. So she told zhir the truth, and zhe listened without judgement.

Before Robin had a chance to respond, a frustrated shout from someone in the rest of the room made zhir dispel the dampening darkness. “—mit!” Finn had been in the middle of shouting, straddling Banana Man at the controls along with Peace Master on the other side.

“We should still be able to make it,” Peace Master insisted. “We must. Is there some way you can dump ballast or something to rise faster? I don’t really know all that much about submarines but I think that’s a thing.”

“It’s a thing,” Banana Man confirmed, “but it’s not a thing I wanna do unless—”

“—we have to,” Finn finished, impatient. “Do it.”

There was a lurch, a shuddering, and then everyone in the sub felt briefly weightless as the vehicle began to plummet. Lights flickered and the sound system blared a burst of static. Macy lost control of herself and rolled a solid meter across the floor before springing upright in alarm. Then there was a final lurch, accompanied by some clearly ungood readouts on the sub’s control panel.

Beau cleared his throat. “Can I assume from the sound of that, that we aren’t going to be leaving so soon?”

Finn, turning back, stuck his tongue out in annoyance, but Banana Man merely nodded. “Whatever you guys were fighting must have formed quite the blanket above the sub,” he said. “We were repelled back like moths from a fire extinguisher.”

“Sounds like it’s time for round, uh, two or three!” exclaimed Jake, morphing into the shape of a leaf-blower. “Depending on how you count. I can clear a path, and then—”

“—no,” said PM, raising a hand which glowed with golden light. “If they’re capable of this, then there must be an unimaginable number of them. Clearing them out and then returning to the sub isn’t an option, we can’t all stay outside the sub because we wouldn’t be able to keep up, and with numbers like that, a partial force of us would not be sufficient to clear a path. Ascent is not an option at the moment.”

Finn pulled at his hair, grimacing. For a moment he looked at Jake, hoping his bro’s presence would give him a way out. No, that wasn’t to be. Sighing, he admitted through gritted teeth, “The exorcist’s right. We need to… regroup, come up with something else.” That was the right course of action, and at the moment, he couldn’t let pride get in the way of that. He’d made a bad call, motivated by fear, so all he could do now was trust his colleagues not to repeat his mistake.

* * *

Canyon felt like she’d definitely made the right call, holding the smonsters off on her own. They smonsters were pushovers. It was almost like they weren’t even  _ trying _ to fight back. One slice from the War Fork scattered a whole line to dust. One blast of water guided by her arm pulverized an attacking cloud. Even when some few did get close enough to form their bodies into weapons to strike her, she had ample time to elbow, kick, or stab them into oblivion.

When enough time had passed that she figured the others must have reached the sub, she began to ascend, to regroup with her student. She’d pulled a piece of the Anemone Way down with her to use as a secondary weapon, but what goes down must come up. She grabbed hold of the water that was struggling to return to the surface, shimmied over a volcanic vent for extra lift (pinching her nose with her other hand to avoid breathing in fume solute), and ascended.

As she rose, she spun, clotheslining yet more smonsters with her outstretched elbow. It seemed like they were gathering toward her, perhaps in some vain attempt to stop her from knocking off the entirety of their forces a little at a time. It was cute how they thought they stood a chance.

At first she didn’t notice the change. Since she was rising through the water, it didn’t make much difference if the smonsters were diving toward her rather than coming straight on. None were coming up from below anymore, but she didn’t give that fact any heed. Why should she, after all? She had no reason to fear.

That is, until a monster got a bit too close to her face to her liking.

She was able to knock it away with a short headbutt, before her rolling clothesmaker destroyed it along with all the others. Still, that was close. She could feel her skin tingling where some attacking part of it — a claw? a fang? maybe a lance of some kind, if it were the kind of weirdo who used lances? — had gotten close enough to feel its pressure. Suddenly, all the amorphous forms charging toward her seemed a lot less ignorable.

Now that she wasn’t ignoring them, she saw what she had failed to before. They were moving differently than she’d seen them do in the past. Earlier, they had been mindless attackers, having no form of groupthink or strategy beyond what wicked forms they could assume in an attempt to inflict any damage whatsoever. They were creatures with neither caution nor cleverness. Even back then, when she’d last fought them here, they would have been useless were it not for the direction of their general.

Now, though? Now they looked like they were retreating. They were coming down from above en masse, taking swipes at her as they passed (she tucked her arm out of the way to avoid a sudden swipe from a barbed tendril). There was just one problem with that: They didn’t retreat.

A bolt of fear struck her like a lightning rod being used as an oversized quarterstaff. She broke away from the upcurrent, spinning her quadrident widdershins to counteract her angular momentum. Looking down, she could see only a black ness blacker than the abyss that should have been beneath her. That was a lot of smonsters.

“Wait!” she shouted, in the  _ completely _ ridiculous hope that the others could hear her, as she began to dive down once more. “The smonsters are—”

_ Shnk. _

* * *

Macadamia wasn’t in the sub.

She was, of course. There was no way she could have possibly left it, at least not without subjecting her to pressures that would have cracked even her impressively tough outer shell and made her internal organs distressingly external. By all accounts, she was still huddled in the corner of the vehicle next to Robin, clutching her knees and rocking back and forth rhythmically as the vehicle shuddered its way along the ocean floor, heading toward the location of Magolith’s seal for lack of a better place to be. Her mind, however, was elsewhere — or perhaps it would be better to say it was elsewhen.

It started, as most of her dreams did, with a familiar setting. This time around it wasn’t the chocolate aviary back in Bubblegum Castle where she’d met the man who was now her father; nor was it the classroom she’d used to attend prior to her adoption, before Princess Cookie was forced to withdraw her due to her decaying mental state. Instead, she found herself running through the woods of the Valley of Moths in the dead of winter. The trees were replete of leaves, and the cold, dusty ground beneath her shifted uncomfortably with each hurried footfall. She didn’t know what she was running from, and her lack of neck meant she couldn’t afford to turn back to check. All she knew was that it was silent, scentless, and dangerous.

Up ahead, the natural walls of Jugland Mesa loomed above, their scale heightened by imagination and fear. If she could only scale those cliffs, then she would be safe, protected by Mél and Pete and the rest of the Nut Guard. The more she ran, however, the further away it seemed. For every tree she passed, ducking under grabbing branches and leaping over tripping roots, two more seemed to pop up to obstruct her path. The smells of copper and sulfur from the distant mines became more acrid, intensifying until she felt like she was inside a giant car battery. Still the castle loomed above, its parapets reaching out like grasping hands. Whether they intended to help or hinder, she could do naught but guess.

Suddenly — in the span of a mere eternity — she came upon a familiar clearing, greeted by an equally familiar yet disjointed sight. Instead of the silvery lake which marked Robin’s entrance to the Crystal Dimension, there was a square of ornate carpeting, like the floor of a well-to-do but tasteless dignitary’s office. The rock next to it was a prone, chiseled statue of the late Blondie Palmerson, and instead of a sunbathing snake, the slit-eyed Bandit Princess stood over him, withdrawing a narrow sword from that stone.

Macy drew to a stop, though her breath and warmth kept moving forward and left her body. This had been the sight which had greeted her when she’d first arrived in Jugland, and all because she was so stupid as to think she could help out a real detective with some crimesolving. She’d come face to face with violent evil that day, and what had she to show for it? A moment of petrified terror that lingered in her nightmares to this day.

The worst part was that she wasn’t even terrified because of the dead body. She had no connection to Ambassador Palmer, save for despising his replacement. No, she was terrified because this incident had demonstrated something she’d refused to acknowledge: She had just been a scared, overconfident kid playing at being a hero. Maybe she still was.

_ No. _ She broke her gaze away from Bandit Princess’s eyes, so much like her mentor Huntress Wizard’s. HW had given her the tools to stand up for herself, and she felt those tools in her hand now. She was holding a bow she’d never held before except in her dreams, a beautiful weapon carved of willow, but it wasn’t the bow that let her confidently take her breath back. It was the strength, granted by the huntress, to draw the string back. She locked her eyes on Bandit Princess once again, seeing her look of scorn and returning it. With one more, raspy breath, she nocked an arrow and prepared to fire.

She was interrupted by the thing she’d been running from suddenly catching up and swallowing her in one bite. Apparently it was a giant, semitransulcent pink dragon. Huh. Well, that was new.

The dragon lifted up into the star-speckled sky, and as Macy looked down, she could see its body turn into clouds as the landscape below her faded and blurred, its form obscured by distance. Looking back up, the rest of the dragon was gone; she was buoyed up by a pillar of clouds as she shot toward a canopy of rhinestones embedded in black velvet, a false sky conjured by her dreaming subconscious to house her memories.

A tear opened in that velvet, cut through by a conical horn. A great narwhal fell through the hole, made of muted pinks and blues and greens, and a rainbow poured out behind it. The narwhal spun in the air, orienting itself until it looked straight at Macy and said, in Robin’s voice: “Dang, this is a new one.”

Macy’s eyes shot open. Someone had moved her from the corner and sat her up on the bench instead. Robin stood in front of her, eyes closed and horn glowing, but before Macy could take in any more of her surroundings, zhe snapped awake as well, dismissing whatever spell zhe had been casting.

“Good!” zhe exclaimed. “You’re finally awake. Well, in a manner of speaking.”

Macy had been rubbing her eye, but this comment made her stop. “You mean I’m still asleep?” she demanded, the harsh edge in her voice grating her throat. Being angry hurt.

“Kinda more like the opposite, really. You were never asleep to begin with, just…” Zhe conjured illusory eyes in front of zhir own ruby peepers, then made the eyes dilate and roll up. “Out of it.”

“Ah.” Apparently all of Macy’s embarrassment had been relocated to her left arm, since it felt prickly and numb.  _ That’s my favorite arm, too! _ “Yeah, I haven’t been having a great time of it lately.”

“You’re telling me!” Robin barked, zhir jowls flapping about like squid ink spaghetti. “That was the worst episode you’ve had in a  _ long _ time, and I know a thing or two about long things, being one myself.”

“That was a stretch.” She winked. Robin winked back. They kept winking back and forth until Robin got a lash in zhir eye and doubled over clutching it.

“But seriously,” Robin winced through gritted teeth, “this ain’t sustainable. Even being right here, it took me a hot minute to navigate my way into your subconscious, and that’s a hot minute we wouldn’t be able to afford on a solo mission.”

Macy sighed. “I know. I may need to reconsider my career path if this continues to be an issue.”

“Reconsider, shmeconsider. I was just gonna say you should medicate that junk. Get Dr. Upe to prescribe you some  _ bona fide _ antihallucinogens or whatever.”

“I don’t think a school therapist can actually do that, and even if xe could, Mom probably wouldn’t like it. You know her thing about psychiatrists.”

“So?” Robin scoffed. “She’s not your dad.”

“That is true.” For the first time, Macy’s head felt clear enough to look around the sub, whereupon she realized that the only other person in the sub was Banana Man, sitting at the controls. “Where’s everyone else?”

Robin grew an arm and hand out from zhir nose, which thumbed in the direction of the airlock. “Oh, they left to go fight Magolith.”

“Ah okay that makes fight  _ who‽” _

“You know. Magolith, the Molten One, Forge of Islands and Sublimator of Flesh.” A beat. “Hold on, did I forget to tell you that Mag—”

_ “You forgot to tell me that Magolith had escaped!” _ Macy clutched her head in confusion. There was so much terror in her mind that whatever part of it was responsible for giving emotional reactions to things saw it, decided reacting to all of that at once was a fool’s errand, and just gave her befuddlement instead. It didn’t help that she was in a confined space filled with disconcerting electronic hums that blocked any view of the outside world. “That’s a pretty big thing to gloss over. What happened?”

Robin shrugged. “We got bamboozled.”

* * *

What happened was this. As our dear Witness has testified, the dastardly dust devils — the so-called smonsters — had begun retreating. They were not, of course, repelled by the various forces defending against them. The Ambrosia child’s weaponizing of her own body was impressive, and the collective powers of the ones who called themselves heroes were something truly to be reckoned with, on a good day. However, as you may have surmised, Canyon’s pet theory was actually a pet fact. There was simply no amount of force which might have convinced the devils to flee, save for a word from their commanding officer. Magolith had issued its first command.

The words of this command were not made of sound. They took the form of a slow diffusion of volcanic particles, brimstone and heavy metals, which none but creatures of earth or fire could hope to recognize as having any meaning. In fairness, I exaggerate only a little in saying that Magolith “issued” it. It was more like an alarm clock, created in the moment of the Hecatoncheir’s sealing, set to spew forth its clarion call when the seal first began to weaken. Think of it like a fart: silent yet deadly.

Our ‘heroes’ could not sense this siren, but they certainly saw its effects. All of the dust devils in the chasm, who had been driven to wakefulness by the activity, began heading toward the siren scent’s source. You see, the reason it’s inaccurate to say they were retreating wasn’t just because they weren’t driven by fear — a retreat can be ordered, after all. It’s because they weren’t going  _ away _ from something, but  _ toward _ something. They were going to the aid of their commanding officer.

There was a second part to this message, one which was equally important. Dust devils are nasty little things, all destruction and no showmanship, but they’re dull as, well, dust. While they’ll go out of their way to hurt anything that moves, they’re not very good at it on their own, especially while in the water and constantly on the verge of being dissolved. In order for them to do any damage at all, they either need a completely defenseless target or some outside force giving them directions. Magolith’s message, then was twofold: first, that they should come to the spot of his sealing, and second, that they should cut through anyone they encounter along the way, in a specific manner so that they might actually do damage.

And let me tell you, damage they did. Waterlily could attest to that, if she weren’t dead. Well, I suppose if she weren’t dead there wouldn’t be anything to attest, but — oh me, oh my, I’m sounding a bit like the Witness here. The point is, now being driven by command instead of undirected destructive tendencies, they hit a bit harder in places that hurt a bit more. That made them something they hadn’t been up until that point. It made them dangerous.

Canyon now knew that danger better than anyone. Oh, don’t worry; she wasn’t dead yet. It would take more than being stabbed through the arm, leg, and side by three beings made of poisonous particulates mixed with igneous silt to kill a being of her impressive fortitude. In fact, despite the pain that seared through every fiber of her being as she was propelled violently downward against her will, she managed to cling onto the barest glimmer of consciousness. Everyone give her a round of applause. Yes, all one of you. Very good. This ends the audience participation part of the story.

At first, Canyon could think of nothing but the pain she was feeling, since that was the nature of pain. However, this soon grew boring, and as her body acclimated to the sensation, her mind refocused on the task at hand. Ever the consummate professional, she began to postulate on what exactly these creatures’ endgame was and how she might avert it. The sudden not-retreat had dispelled the illusion that their actions were entirely without direction, but in her case she might have done better to dispel it to a lesser degree. Now she labored under the equal and opposite delusion that  _ all _ their actions were aimed toward an objective, rather than starting out random and becoming targeted.  _ What could be gained by attacking Cliffpeak Cleft? _ she wondered.  _ What sort of scheme is advanced by the destruction of an unimportant village? _ she mused.

Had her attention not been split between those thoughts and the pain, she might have noticed her descent was nearly at its end. For a moment she could actually see the area illuminated by Robin’s fading spell, casting the swirling figures spiraling in toward an out-of-place volcanic protrusion in ghastly silhouette.  _ Then _ she blacked out as she hit the ground back-first at full speed.

She missed what happened next, which was all well and good if I’m being honest. She would have been just depressed had she been conscious to witness it. Several hundred of the dust devils formed themselves into an enormous silty hand, which picked up the War Fork, raised it high, then brought it crashing down on the geode which had acted as a magical capacitor for hundreds of years. It repeated the process three more times, shattering the two quartzes which now housed most of its power, as well as the third, fake crystal.

Then a second arm appeared.

It was smaller by an order of magnitude, but more tangible, being cast from solid obsidian rather than dust. It emerged from an invisible crack in the ground, releasing a trapped bubble of sulfurous fumes from the base of the mini volcano whence it emerged. It was followed by another arm, on the other side of the volcano, this one made of pewter. A granite hand reached out from under the pile of crystal shards Finn had worked so hard to gather, flicking them away with a careless gesture. Another hand appeared on a nearby section of cliff face, this one still glowing red and molten but cooling as it emerged into the water.

By the time the sub reached that area and the first crew members redisembarkedicated, the area was downright lousy with hands, all working furiously to dig away at the volcano. Finn was the first to step out, and he instantly knew what was happening. He grabbed Jake and started running up toward the volcano, just barely dodging chunks of dislodged rock as they were hurled aimlessly past him. He felt an uncontrollable fear rising in him (which he managed to control anyway), which was entirely justified. This was, after all, an elder being more powerful than he could have understood.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not generally a fan of heroic qualities. Bravery often amounts to uselessly putting yourself in danger, forgiveness is a good way to get stabbed in the back, and generosity is completely without merit. Certain qualities, however, occupy that tiny intersection of the Venn diagram where “qualities generally considered to be heroic” and “qualities I admire” coexist. Finn and Jake possessed one such quality, which served them well in that moment. In particular, the two of them were so fiercely devoted to the other that, without any special empathic projection or telepathy or what have you, they occasionally could share ideas faster than the speed of communication.

As a result, Jake knew what he had to do, and even though he didn’t have time to question why, he did it. Braving the onslaught of rocks (and taking a few hits to the ol’ noggin in the process), he charged forward, reversing his stance with Finn so that the former was holding the latter rather than the other way around. Like they’d discussed earlier, Jake lowered Finn down into the miniature volcano’s increasingly active caldera. Finn’s suit had been selected with this mission in mind, so it could stand the heat to a degree, but Finn could feel it get uncomfortably warm. If he wasn’t quick, he’d be caramelized.

Now’s where, if I were a complete and utter dunce, I’d switch perspectives to keep you in suspense. Will Finn be okay? Will he burn to a crisp, contaminating the deep ocean with the acrid stench of incinerated golden locks? What was he doing that was worth all that risk? Hah! No, I’ve got more faith in you than that. You don’t need me to tell you this is not where his story ends. If that does happen, it’ll get a lot more foreshadowing, at least. He may not have costar billing, but he’s got tenure, and I gotta respect that.

Anyway, where was I? Erhem. For the briefest of moments, he panicked. Below him, he saw a bed of what looked like coals but was actually semi-molten rock turning over itself and collecting into globules of stone hail as it hardened. What he didn’t see was the blade of the Night Sword. The heat seeping into his bones reminded him that he didn’t have time to fail. With a desperate grunt, he plunged a glove into the non-coals and sorta swished it around a bit until he encountered just the teensiest bit more resistance. His quarry located, he wrapped his hand around the foreign object and tugged at Jake’s tethering arm with his other hand.

The magic dog was, of course, magical in the ways of shapeshifting, which included reeling his arm in like a fishing pole. It was strong magic, too. That’s another thing I admire. Even despite that strength, however, it took a concerted effort for him to pull his favorite brother (with apologies to Jermaine, but he knows the score) out from that hellish mouth-like volcanette. Finn went flying through the water a bit with the momentum, but he soon managed to right himself. He held the night sword in his hand, purple and sharp and cursed as all get-out and also covered with a fine dusting of not-embers. This would have been a  _ very _ different story if the thing he’d grabbed turned out to be, like, a weird-shaped rock. Why don’t you speculate on that counterfactual conditional?

While all that jazz was happening, Peace Master and Beau attended to Canyon. PM knew a healing trick or two, different very much in nature and form from the poultices produced by the ever-effervescent Razz Wildberry, yet quite similar in function. Mostly they consisted of praying to spirits of healing to manifest ethereal splints. He had to cash in a few divine favors, but he’d built up quite a stockpile since his disastrous mission at Castle Jugland, so he had quite a few to spare. Really, his only problem was that by relying on the power of otherworldly beings in the first place, he ensured that it was a rather slow and tedious affair. We’re not famous for being responsive; he might have done well to learn such spells under his own power, had the amassment of personal power not been forbidden by his sacred oaths. That, at least, is something I can empathize with.

Beau’s job consisted of defending healing exorcist and fainted adventurer alike from attack, which in turn consisted of using a magical hammer made of blue energy to smash hands made of rocks. Most wizards wouldn’t be very good in straight-up physical combat, but Rhombeaufortchamp always prided eirself on taking a hands-on approach to magic. Sure, e fired the occasional ball of lightning from eir fingers to dissipate huge swaths of dust devils with the resulting electrolysis of the saltwater (a process whose physics I’m sure would be fascinating were it more relevant), but that was crude. E was a wizard, a scholar, a scientist. Mostly, though, e was a rock-hand-crusher. If there was one thing to be said about em, e always fully committed to whatever role e happened to take on.

Speaking of which, Witness, you can step back in and resume narration duties. I’ve got to go round up that guest speaker we discussed.

* * *

Just when I think I can’t hate that guy any more, he dips out in the middle of a scene. I’d get rid of him if I could, but we’ve got a lot to cover if you want to understand your situation, and despite my current near-omniscience, I’m not sure I could tell the whole story by myself.

Let’s check back in with our old friend Cragg Ambrosia, hm? Since she still believed what had happened with the smonsters to be an ordinary retreat, she was scouring Cliffpeak Cleft looking for stragglers, of which there were none. The fact that she couldn’t find any just made her more convinced that they were there, hiding, biding their time, so the search only intensified.

At first, she’d gotten strange looks from the townsfolk, wondering why she wasn’t pursuing the threat as adventurers were wont to do. Cragg found this more than a little upsetting, since despite what her boisterous and outgoing personality would seem to indicate, she didn’t like being the center of attention, at least not when it wasn’t deliberate. “What’re you looking at?” she asked to a blobfish merteen whom she thought was staring judgementally.

A beat.

“What?” asked the mermaid, shaking her head. “Sorry, I was on my smart contacts, updating my status from ‘probs gonna kick it’ to ‘didn’t kick it yet.’ ‘Dja want somethin’?”

Cragg facepalmed. She’d jumped to yet another awkward and wrong conclusion. She knew she had to stop assuming the worst in others, especially older teens, but come on. Come on. Older teens were jerks. Cragg hoped that she’d never have the poor taste to be an older teen, and instead to remain a young teen until she reached adulthood.

Still, she felt she needed a response, so she said, “yeah, I want some help searching for any scurrilous smonsters that might have surreptitiously stayed here during the surrender.” (What, were you expecting a fake alliteration joke, like “sretreat”? Reality doesn’t always line up with running gags, you know.)

“K.” was all the mermaid said in response, then swam away.

Cragg assumed she was just being rude, and thusly resumed her search with a bit more grumpiness, but soon she saw that other people were doing the same. That mermaid must have talked to someone else, who’d talked to a few others, and now the whole town was invested in the search. They left no shell unturned, looking in coral alleyways and under barnacle benches. A few brave kids younger than she left to go check the nearby kelp forest.

As this went on, the thought finally occurred to Cragg that there might not be some secret master plan to destroy this random trenchside town by invading it from the inside out, so she left the townsfolk to continue the search while she headed out over the trench to get away from the noise and think. That’s when she saw it.

I’ll spare you the details of what exactly it looked like when Cragg spotted the remains of Waterlily Highschool, drifting through the tinted current, still harnessed to the wagon of bad goods she loved so much. Were I to describe it in any detail, you would be sickened. The universe had no such kindness for an intrepid water elemental that day. She felt hollow and sick to her stomach, like at once she was absent of substance and all too full of it. She wanted to turn back time, to wake up in her bed and realize that the day’s events were but a dream, some horrid fantasy cooked up by her subconscious to play upon her fears of what might happen to her if she continued on this danger-seeking lifestyle. But she knew that was impossible; her mind didn’t have the knowledge required to recreate the tableau before her.

As so often happens, shock was buried under a pile of other emotions — fear, disgust, and most surprisingly of all, anger. She was  _ angry _ at the smonsters, for killing someone whom she’d sworn to protect. She was downright cheesed, in fact. Before, it had been brewing war or extermination; the danger was abstract and impersonal, the atrocities yet hypothetical. Now, though? Now it lay before her in all its gory detail, and she was mad about it.

Freezing her heart against revulsion, she swam back around and approached one of the townspeople. She had to tell them where she was going. Someone had to witness her oath.

“Well, gollee, little missy,” said the manatee before her, tugging at his business collar with no shirt attached. “First of all, I’d like to thank you for not letting those weird guys wreck up my apartment complex; I’d never get that security deposit back. Soon as I heard I could help out by looking around for the critters, I started right away. You know, I’m really good at finding things. One time, my cousin—”

“Oh my glob stop!” Cragg held up a commanding hand, and with a bit of superfluous sputtering, the manatee stammered to a halt. “You can call off the search. The smonsters have all fled into the chasm. Probably to set a trap for me,” she added, less because she thought that was the case and more that she hoped so.

The manatee fidgeted with his collar some more. “Is that the case? Well, that’s sure a relief. I mean, not that I couldn’t keep searching, but, you know, it’s good to know that they’re not liable to jump out at me from around the corner when I’m not expecting it. Though I suppose even — hey, wait, where are you going?”

Cragg had gotten bored several sentences ago and begun to swim away. She’d changed her mind; the oath wasn’t important. She knew what she meant, and that was what mattered. Still his question gave her an opportunity to bust out a one-liner, and what kind of hero would she be if she passed on such an opportunity?

Looking him dead in the eye, she said, “I’m going to spring the trap, and they’re the ones who’re gonna get caught.”

The manatee raised one of his fins and wobbled it. “Eh, I’d give that one a six or seven out of ten. It’s a bit wordy, and it feels like it overexplains itself.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Hm, maybe I should go with a pun instead? Or a rhyme, those are always neat. You know anything that rhymes with smonster?”

The manatee opened his mouth and—

“Oh, wait, sorry, gotta go for real!” Crag turned around and plunged into the abyss, grabbing a bit of the current before she went and wrapping it around her arm. This was going to be her biggest hammer yet.

* * *

“This was going to be my biggest mission yet,” Macy whined. “And I have to sit it out!”

Robin tsked. “Now, I know this is gonna be super ironic coming from me, but that’s not a very healthy attitude to take toward this, Macy.”

“…I know.” She hung her head, dejected. “It’s not just that I want to  _ be _ the brave adventurer I always used to read about. Or maybe it is! But either way, I still feel like there’s more to it. I should be able to help, I’m just not.”

“I get that,” Robin assured her. “Hey, trust me, I do. I’m basically an expert on not doing anything to help out. Remember that time we and Masse got lost in the deadly weapons museum and I didn’t do anything at all to get you back to Princeso?”

“I can never forget it. I was hungry and tired, and Seyv kept trying to pick fights with tourists.”

“Yeah, that was fun times.” Robin let out a wistful sigh, then shook zhirself like zhe’d just gotten out of the bath. “Well, what I was gonna say was that you’ve really got nothing to feel — I mean, you shouldn’t — I mean, you’ve done more’n you know for this mission already. We wouldn’t even  _ be _ here if it weren’t for you!”

Macy let out a cold, empty sound that was clearly supposed to be a laugh. “I doubt that. This was that Amaranth… thing…’s mission. You opened the portal, and Tiff chased off that crazy cat lady so they could give it, but my only contribution was being there.”

“That’s totally not true, dude. Didja forget why you were there to begin with? You got us down there in the first place.”

“Not really. All I knew about the mines were stuff that anyone else who’d taken the tour would have known. I’m nothing special. Well, okay, that’s not true, I’m super special, but not in this specific circumstance.”

What Robin had intended to do next was to remind zhir friend about the other ways she’d helped in the mission — distracting Furonica, recruiting Finn via Huntress Wizard, helping to hold the Water Dragon at bay. However, in that moment, zhe had a rare moment of insight. Zhe realized that Macy’s problem really didn’t have anything to do with her actual capabilities, merely her own assessment of them through the lens of her depressed mental state.

With that in mind, zhe said something zhe’d wanted to tell Macy for a long time. Zhe said, “That’s okay.”

This answer was so unexpected that Macy suddenly shot up, banging the back of her shell against the sub wall and causing a harsh clanging that made Banana Man cringe. “Could you repeat that?” Macy asked.

“Sure,” Robin obliged. “I said that’s okay. It’s totes fine to not be special or necessary or useful all the time. Your value as a person is intrinsic, not based on what you can do for others. You don’t always need to be fixing something, or saving someone. Sometimes it’s okay to be the person everyone else is protecting.”

Macy felt a hot stinging sensation around her eyes. Something was leaking from them, trickling down her face in a beeline pattern. It didn’t make sense to be tears, of course; those came when she was sad, or happy, or sometimes wistful. No, the emotion she felt right now was relief, like she had been carrying around an enormous statue which had finally fallen out of her backpack, freeing her. She wiped the fluid from her face and said, “Thank you, Robin. You can carry the statue now.”

“The wha?”

She chortled. “I guess you had to be there.”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

“By there I meant my mind.” Climbing onto the bench, she sat bow-legged, hands on her knees. “I think I’m better now, though I won’t say that I’m best yet. What you just said means a lot to me. I still want to help, though, and I think I have an idea how to do that. I’ll just do the same thing I did before, actually: I’ll use the sub’s weapon systems from in here, to lend y’all guys support.”  _ Just need to take a moment to recenter myself first. _

Robin grimaced. “There’s just one problem with that. We can’t get off the ground, ‘member? ‘s the whole reason we wound up doubling back to start with.”

Eyes closed, Macy concentrated all of her mental energy on the present moment. The soft smile on her face was replaced by a hard line which better fit her carapaced form. “Just provide support on fire until I can get the weapons systems actuated. Once I’ve put this plan into motion, your job’ll get a lot easier.”

“Ah, I get it. A little ‘I rub your belly, you shoot mine so it’s easier to belly-rub’ kinda situation.”

“I would never in a kibizajillion years use those specific words to describe it, but essentially, yeah. You should probably get going, since I doubt Magolith will let us talk here indefinitely.”

“Right-o.” But as zhe put on zhir helmet and stepped into the waterlock, Robin was still reluctant to abandon Macy’s side. Zhe knew the kid — the  _ teen, _ sorry — still had to be scared out of her wits, whatever brave face she put on. All of them were. But in the moment, that didn’t matter. Robin prided (proud?) zhirself on knowing when to do the pragmatic thing, and right now, that was to fight outside the sub. Zhe pressed the button, and the inner waterlock door closed.

Inside the sub, Banana Man scrunched his face. “Hey, so, I didn’t wanna mention it in front ‘a zhir, but zhe and Jake  _ stink _ when they’re wet.”

Macy snapped her eyes open and raised her hands. “I know, right‽ Get this: Yesterday, just before I went into the mines, I had to give her a bath. Well, I say that, but…”

* * *

Jake was glad to see Robin exit the sub at that moment. In fact, considering the number of burning-hot hands grasping at his helmet from all sides, he was glad to see at all. The searing pain of those arms grabbing onto his stretchy dog-flesh to make into ripe targets for piercing monster attacks didn’t help matters, if he was being entirely honest with himself.

Somehow he managed to muster enough concentration to send out a message on the radio channel. “We’ve got backup,” he said. Then he scrunched up his neck and turned it into a lot of fists, punching outward to clear away some of the hands.

“You sure do,” came Robin’s voice. “Now back me up while I clear the ship.”

“On it,” said Finn, slicing through the hands Jake had shaken off like grass through pizza. He had the Night Sword once more, and he wielded it as naturally as if he’d never lost it. The purple blade had acquired a red glow around its blades, leaving afterimages as it swung through the water; bubbles of steam hissed from around its base. That was new. The effect was somewhat diminished by the banana-yellow pressure suit Finn was wearing, but it still looked cool. “Jake, you keep protecting our friends.”

Jake wanted to tell Finn that he could protect his own dang friends, and that if he realized how much this situation was really quite aggravating he’d be a little slower to throw Jake under the bus. That is, until he remembered that this whole fiasco could probably have been avoided if he’d been a bit more careful around crystals. Not wanting to give Finn a chance to bring this up, he simply said, “Sure thing, buddy!” and stretched himself over to Canyon, Beau, and Peace Master.

Canyon was still out cold, but she was stable for now, so both PM and Beau were engaged in defending her from increasingly frequent dive-bomb attacks from smonsters. They seemed to have something against her. Maybe it was something she’d said. Committing a  _ faux pas _ at the bottom of the ocean could get you in deep trouble, after all. Whatever the motive, the two were able to fend off the attacks, but just barely; already, it looked like both of them were starting to reach their limit, at least based on what little body language Jake could make out past the restrictions of their diving suits.

He grew a fist to massive size and punched the water above them. At first, he thought he’d dissipated a huge cloud of smonsters, but then he felt a sharp prick in his hand. He reflexively opened it to see that a small company had reformed inside of his balled fist, and were charging straight for his eye. He barely flattened his head in time to dodge their strike. It was clear they were getting faster.

Not fast enough to avoid his ear when he shapeshifted it into a flyswatter to smack them into oblivion for real.  _ You’re not gonna mess me up that easy, dudes. _

He moved to get closer to Canyon, but he felt something hot tug on his leg. He looked down to see that several hands had reached out to grab his foot, attempting to root him in place. Of course, he easily slipped out by shrinking his foot, but still, that was  _ unbelievably _ rude.

To show Magolith just what he thought of such rudeness, he stretched his leg out toward the now-crumbling volcano, intending to kick some sense into the elemental. Where once there was the minicano whence Finn had just retrieved his sword, there now stood only a pile of rocks and some hands shifting through them. That was a good sign, at least. It meant Magolith hadn’t fully freed himself.

_ Let’s keep it that way. _ Jake grew his foot to massive size and slammed it down onto the pile, smashing hands and tamping down rocks. There was of course a flash of searing pain from the heat and jagged edges, but he managed to whine through it. Not even a thing.

He turned around, smiling smugly about a job well done, and saw two arms grappling Beau by the shoulders while Peace Master was repeatedly pummeled by smonsters sneaking up on him from the smaller volcanic vents that dotted the landscape.  _ I can’t turn my back on these people for five seconds. I swear, they’re like risotto. _

Stretching a foot over there, he used that as leverage to spring the rest of his body forward, slamming into the smonster assailants. He of course dispatched them all with his slingshot body-slam, freeing Peace Master and cracking the arms holding Beau enough for em to break free. However, this time, when the monster forms pierced his dog flesh in their death throes, it stung like the dickens. He felt odd and tingly, like he was on fire but in a way that wasn’t good or bad, it simply was.

He knew what this meant. He was being poisoned. The smonsters had acclimated to the contents of the volcanic vents whence they had attacked, and in so doing, they’d become equally poisonous. Even now, brimstone and heavy metals sloughed through his veins. If Canyon had been awake right now and he’d been present when she mentioned this possibility two chapters ago, she’d have told him that she told him so.

Sighing, he snapped his fingers and grew his liver to enormous proportions so he could process the poison instantly. He found the place where they’d nicked him and contorted his body so that the cut was inside his helmet and thus not exposed, and the stinging instantly died down. For now, most of the pain came from internal tension as his overclocked organs chugged away. He was gonna need to drink a lot of water after this mission.

Then came a pound resounding from beneath the Earth, like all the world was a drum and the beast below its player. The ground rumbled under everyone’s feet, and the reverberations hung suspended in the water, demanding a hushed stillness. As if in some rhythmic harmony with the pounding from below, smonsters streamed in from above and all around, distracted from their previous engagements, gathering into a massive hand-shaped mass over the the center of where the mound once stood and slipping into the cracks.

Jake considered trying to stretch himself into stopping that, but in those numbers they’d probably poison him faster than he could grow, which was very fast. Instead, he focused on propping up Peace Master, Beau, and Canyon, getting them up and out of reach of any more grabby hands as he helplessly watched what unfolded next. He wasn’t sure how many smonsters had been down here, but it seemed like  _ all _ of them were pouring into that hole and then blasting out in time with that horrid drumbeat, each time kicking up a plume of dust that formed into another smonster. It was oddly beautiful, like watching a nature documentary about the imminent fall of civilization.

When they stopped, hovering in the air like the rumble had been just a few moments prior, Jake foolishly thought he could take a breath.

Something burst through the center, sending rocks surfaceward at speeds too fast for the canine eye. It wasn’t a hand, not exactly, but neither was it entirely  _ not _ a hand. It was a bit shorter than Beau, but the luminous halo from its molten-red glow reflecting off the smonster army around it made it seem like the biggest thing in the universe. Its form was too indistinct to make out, but it seemed to be shaped either like an upraised, clenched fist or a humanoid street urchin with spiked hair pulled from a questionable 21st-century fashion magazine and glued carelessly to its scalp. Whatever the case, one thing was certain: It was staring directly at Jake with two eyes that seemed to suck in light like tiny black holes even as the rest of him emitted the stuff.

It would be inaccurate to say that Magolith spoke. When it raised its hand, conjuring several other hands from the ground to grab Jake and yank him forcefully to the ocean floor, then sent a blast of searing heat toward his face that threatened to singe his fur, there was no speech involved. Nevertheless, it made itself perfectly well understood:  _ Don’t bother trying. I’ve already won. _

The submarine had something else to say about that. In the distraction it had gained the advantage and managed to rise high enough to shoot a harpoon out of its bottom-mounted cannon. Magolith was quick, whirling around and raising a hand from the rubble below to catch it an inch from its face. The dust was beginning to settle around it, and for the first time Jake and the others could make out its expression as it stared down this projectile. It was aggravated and tired, which was understandable since it’d just woken up. It did not seem at all pleased to have to deal with this kind of resistance after making its escape. It wasn’t afraid or even surprised, though. It was just annoyed.

Inside the submarine, Macy smirked. She pressed a button, and the harpoon electrified, sending out arcs of lightning to exceed even Beau’s earlier displays. Magolith’s irritated face lit up with shock, then was obscured as literal tons of water ionized in a massive bang. Everyone could hear the boom, could feel the pressure wave rock them, could sense the force that was ripping through half the smonsters in the chasm, but it was so bright that nobody could see it.

Nobody, that was, except Robin.

* * *

Four-year-old Robin had always known that zhe was different. At that age, zhe still hadn’t developed any pup powers, something zhir siblings and cousins had been born with. Even among a people who all looked wildly different from each other, zhir ruby peepers stood out as something unusual. Worst of all, zhe still hadn’t moved out of the house, even though most of zhir cousins already had stable careers at half zhir age.

One day, zhe was lounging about at home, seated on a beanbag chair that had all the cush sat out of it, doing zhir best to watch a a cartoon on a flickery television monitor. Suddenly, zhe spoke. “Pop,” zhe asked zhir father in the other room, “why are the colors broken?”

Zhir father, a grey, mangy rainicorn-dog who was rifling through papers scattered across a slate desk with a distraught paw on his head and another on a glass of mint julep, didn’t immediately respond. He turned over a piece of paper, read through it several times, then let out a scream of frustration and ripped it in two. Then he slammed his hands on the table, looked up, and said, “‘Dju say summat?”

“The colors,” Robin repeated. “On the TV. Why are they broken?”

He had no idea what that meant, but bless him, he did his best to answer regardless. “It’s a pretty cheap monitor,” he said. “Assum’dly just a mite defective. Like a lot of the rubbish we’re stuck with here.”

“No, no,” zhe clarified, “it’s like this on all kindsa screens. Why’s there so few colors? Normally there’s a whole bunch that sorta blend into each other, but here it’s like needles.”

Robin’s father was not particularly skilled at those magics unique to those of rainicorn descent, like his father before him, but he did have basic knowledge of how light worked. After a few moments of pondering, he realized what his child was trying to communicate. “Sure, then, you mean the light frequencies. TVs and such only produce about ten or so basic colors, which together is enough to look real for most blokes. It’s not broken, it’s just an approximation.”

“Fine!” As always, Robin had no idea where this outburst was coming from. All zhe knew was that zhe was seeing sparks. “Remind me again how I don’t see right like most folks. I just love thinking about that, huh? Rub it in my face that I’m a freak!”

“Sweetie, I wasn’t—” He cut himself off. He wasn’t great at this whole parenthood thing, but denying the validity of zhir reaction seemed like a particularly bad way to do it. “Sweetie,” he started again, “you’re not a freak. You’re amazing, and you shouldn’t feel shamed of the fact that you see different. In fact, you ought to be proud. Not many people can see what you can.”

Robin crossed zhir arms and, being unable to sink into the firm beanbag, sort of melted over it instead. “Doesn’t count,” zhe muttered halfheartedly. “‘s magic. Not really sight.”

“Never let others tell you what’s real and what’s not. Normalcy? Popularity? Homeowner’s insurance? Those are all just social constructs; they’re only as real as we let them become. Just because you need to put in a little extra work to see doesn’t disqualify your vision. Your eyes are different, but they’re not worse. In fact, they’re like magic lenses, so wouldn’t that make them better?”

Those aforementioned eyes went wide — or rather, the eyelids opened up around the embedded jewels — at that last sentence. It was probably a mistake for Robin’s pop to say it quite like that. After all, for all zhir insecurities, zhe was a shapeshifter. That kind never really needs any help getting bigheaded. It’s best not to offer it.

* * *

_ I heard that! _

* * *

Quiet, Announcer. This isn’t about you.

When everyone else was blinded by the light, Robin saw more clearly than zhe had since arriving. Zhir horn, finely attuned to all different wavelengths of light, was not overwhelmed by the burst of electromagnetism, but instead used its energy to shine brightly in all the other colors, both real and imaginary, and what it got back showed zhir the full picture. Zhe saw zhir friends, gathered together for the fight, tired and disoriented yet unbroken. Zhe saw the smonsters, oblivious as always to their own benefit, half of them already regroup and the other half moving away to deal with some other shiny thing. Zhe saw Magolith, or what was present of it, churning and grasping and most of all reeling from this blow.

Most importantly, zhe saw the magic clearly for the first time. What had before been a jumble of chaotic threads now stood out in stark relief. Zhe saw the weave and weft, the pulsation of the powerful wish magic that even now was pulling at Magolith’s feet, linking it to its prison even as it escaped. Zhe saw the lines of energy that fed it, coming up from the ground like the roots of a great tree — no,  _ as _ the roots of  _ the _ Great Tree. And with all that, zhe saw what zhe had to do next.

Zhe reached up and plucked zhir right eye out of zhir head. Stretching zhir paw out toward Magolith as far as zhe could, zhe held the ruby close to the center of the electric discharge, ignoring the scorching pain from sheer proximity to the hecatoncheir. With great effort, zhe channeled every bit of magic and color in zhir body and in the water around zhir to take all that magic and bend it into the ruby, in the process focusing and refining it into something directed.

Then zhe charged forward, slamming the ruby into Magolith’s chest with a mighty roar. Zhe didn’t turn on the radio, but zhe didn’t need to. Everybody could hear it. It was so loud it even woke Canyon up. Or perhaps that was Magolith’s doing, screaming in rage and agony at the same moment.

The fire elemental raised a fist, and countless other fists flared to life on the walls and floor around, preparing to strike Robin, the sub, anything. Jake was faster. He turned his own fists into an enormous mallet, bringing it down on Magolith and sending it straight back down whence it came. Peace Master muttered something at that moment, and golden writing appeared around Beau’s recent additions to the sigil. For what felt like the first time in years, everyone let out their breath.

“…it’s over?” said Finn. It was halfway between a statement and a question. He swung Night Sword around nervously, like he didn’t believe that could be it.

Jake pointed up with an enormous finger. “We’ve still got the rest of these bogies to deal with,” he warned. “I think they’re poisonous now? So that’s gonna be a real pain. We might even need to worry about them.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that,” came Banana Man’s voice over the radio. “I’m picking up something descending rapidly that seems to be making fast work of them.”

Canyon was not privy to this conversation, but even barely conscious, she noticed when everyone glanced upward. Coughing, she squinted at the vague blur in that direction. She thought she recognized it.

“Cragg…?” she moaned, before her head slumped again. PM rushed over to check on her while the others kept gazing at the oncoming figure, not having heard Canyon’s speculation.

In the next moment, Cragg was suddenly very visible, as was the long line of faintly-glowing ocean current she trailed behind her like a hammer on a chain. Every smonster she passed on the way was obliterated, but she didn’t seem to notice. In fact, she barely noticed that she was approaching the ground. Once the others realized what was going on, they started yelling up to her, diving toward or away from the impact site as they saw fit, but, well…

The good news was that the shockwave from her collision wiped out what few smonsters remained. Never again would dust devils terrorize the Sea of Sure Death, at least until they were reintroduced to the area as part of an ill-advised attempt to control the bloop population in 267. If and when Magolith emerged again, it would need to rebuild its army from scratch, or at least get it from somewhere else.

The bad news was that, since her eyes were naturally drawn to the brightest thing in the area and she’d missed the lightning flash, Cragg Ambrosia came down right on top of the submarine, slamming it to the ground and shaking its foundations. On the inside, the lights flickered off. Macy silently freaked out, clutching her head and hyperventilating, but a moment later, Banana Man flicked a switch and the lights came back on.

“Huh,” said Macy, “that wasn’t as bad as I thought. I guess we’re all good.”

Banana Man shook his head. “That’s the emergency power reserves.” He gestured to the dashboard, which had a lot more red than usual. “We’ve got light, limited life support, and a few basic functions for a while, but for all intents and purposes, this ship’s done got wrecked.”

“Oh.”

A beat.

“Is it just me, or is it getting hard to muster up the energy to panic over all these sudden life-or-death scenarios?”

“It’s not just you,” Banana Man assured her. “I’ve been over that hill for ages.”

“Man, growing up sucks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, Macy, but sometimes it's just gonna be like that.
> 
> I should probably talk about the previous chapter as well as this one, since I didn't get a chance to then. Really, that sorta makes sense, since these chapters form two halves of a pair — the one where everything goes wrong, setting the stage for Magolith's return, all while the crew's mental state deteriorates; and the one where Magolith returns, briefly, only for _its_ day to go wrong because Macy recovered just enough to set Robin up for the _coup de grâce._ There's a lot of very deliberate thematic parallels going on here, which I won't get into because I'm not that pretentious.
> 
> What I do want to get into, just a little, is Waterlily Highschool. To be honest, while her death wasn't a fully spontaneous or even unplanned event, it also wasn't necessarily the way she would have exited this arc from the outset. I had a couple different ideas for what to do with her, ranging from having her actually provide a useful crystal in exchange for Robin's eye (rather than Robin using it directly) to making her actively villainous and in league with other recurring villains (specifically as a subcontractor for Toronto the Shiba Inu Who Looks Like a Squirrel). In the end, I killed her off because that was what worked best for the story — in particular, because it let me put Cragg where I needed her — and because this story doesn't really need more recurring villains right now, outside of what I already have planned.
> 
> Unfortunately, this puts her in a camp along with the story's other dead characters, Blondie Palmerson and Shillelagh, where nobody really cares enough to give the death emotional weight. It's even worse, because even Blondie and Shillelagh's deaths were mourned by Mél and Robin respectively. In the end, though, I don't think it matters, because Waterlily's death wasn't written in for its emotional weight. Still, I acknowledge that it's less than ideal; the next time I kill a character, I promise I'll make it really heartbreaking, and you can hold me to it.
> 
> Lemme get ahead of a couple obvious questions. Why was Magolith's emergence solved so quickly, and how the heck are there two chapters left in this arc? To the first one, let me first say that this is only “resolved” if it'll never come up again, but also this isn't really a story about Magolith; it's a story about Macy and Robin. For the purposes of this arc, Magolith is an obstacle that needed to be overcome very specifically by Macy working through her stress-induced paralysis and Robin coming into zhir own as a mage using the powers zhe was unwillingly created to wield. As for the second question, well, I don't want to give anything away, but there are more threads left unresolved than you may remember. (Also, this was originally going to be the seventh chapter, but I shortened pieces of the arc and moved what would have been a post-arc followup chapter into the arc itself to round it out.)
> 
> The discussion prompt was: What's your favorite fun fact about household pets and technology? Mine is that dogs' eyes are too good for TV. Television monitors have a fixed framerate that's fast enough to trick our eyes, but, even for high-definition screens, it's not fast enough for dogs. For them, all TV shows look like a jittery Slack call when your ~~Helpernet~~ Hypernet is being petulant. Yes, this is what inspired Robin's flashback scene. Yes, their TVs have more colors than ours because of Rainicorns. Yes, they probably run at a higher framerate, too, nullifying the point of the actual fun fact.
> 
> And finally, the preview:  
> She couldn’t properly see the beach, even with her incredible vision — the curve of the Earth was just wrong — but somewhere between the spray of mist into the sky and the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the waves, she thought she could make out a refracted shimmer of foothills. The sight, mixed with the smell of salt and clarity that saturated the air, made her want taffy.


	8. The Water Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Things go wrong again.
> 
> Chapter 7 of 8-parter “Below”; chapter 26 overall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the spookiest, scariest, most anxiety-inducing time of year again. That's right, I'm talking about NaNoWriMo. I'm participating again this year, but I've already got all the updates for this month penned and am busy working on the bonus story due for three weeks from now, don't worry. This shouldn't affect the content output on this end, unless it causes a missed update or something, but how could that ever happen?
> 
> Alright, look. I set up the system that was supposed to make it impossible to miss updates, and it's not working. It's lucky I had this date memorized; that may be what I have to do from now on. Even so, I hope I won't miss any updates in the future. We're getting out of this storyline and into more quasi-episodic adventures soon, and I feel like that's where this story is at its best.
> 
> Today's discussion prompt is: Is the Internet cool or what? Like, really. Look at it. It's the Internet. Neat.

The waterlock door of the yellow submarine opened for the last time. Banana Man and Macy stepped out in equally-yellow diving suits. Macy was pretty confident at navigating in the clumsy apparatus by now, but Banana Man stumbled a bit as he stepped out; Macy had to catch him before he crashed into the trench floor. Once they were out, the door shuddered to a near close, halted, and then fell off with a thud.

“Ooh, that doesn’t look good,” said Cragg, sitting on top of the wrecked sub as she addressed the other gathered heroes. “You’re gonna need, like, three rolls of duct tape to fix that.”

Banana Man turned around to glare up at the water elemental. “You broke my sub!” he shouted, loud enough for the sound to carry through the water.

“Alright, fine, I’ll buy the duct tape then.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Oh, get over it!” Cragg shot back. “It’s just your only mode of transportation. Just swim like everyone else.”

Spurred on by the shouting, Canyon stood up, clutching her forehead and side. She felt something on her hip as she did so, looking down to see the golden constructs Peace Master had conjured to patch up her smonster-induced injury. She immediately felt woozy, consequently deciding that maybe the mysterious dressings on her wound were not the most threatening problem at the moment. Her vision was blurry, but she had seen Canyon crashing down and could now see the smashed sub, so she managed to piece the rest together from context.

“…is it over?” she asked. Her voice was still weak, though, so most of the others couldn’t hear her through their helmets, and Cragg couldn’t hear her through the increasingly heated argument she was having with Banana Man (Macy had stepped away from them to rejoin the rest of the group; she’d had more than enough of that sort of thing for the day).

Robin could hear her, though. Zhe was mostly tapped out of magic, but zhe lit up zhir horn, holding zhir paw in front of zhir helmet shapeshifted into a microphone. “Hello to you, too,” zhe said. “It’s Flume, right?”

“Uh—”

“Eh, I’m just messin’ with ya, Canyon. Yeah, it’s over. I got the seal put back on ol’ hothead with Macy’s help, Jake slammed it back into the ground, and best of all, I get to wear an eyepatch now.” Zhe squinted with zhir one good eye (it was only now that Canyon noticed zhir other eye was just a black void). “I mean, I’ve just lost all my depth perception, so right now you look like an average-sized person who’s just really close to me. But otherwise everything’s dandy.”

Canyon couldn’t work up the energy to speak, so she just pointed at the sub, where Banana Man was now shaking his fist indignantly while Cragg ineffectually put her water hands over her water ears and sang a highly bowdlerized sea shanty about two mermaids who really liked playing ping-pong.

Robin turned to look, then gasped. “Oof. I’m gonna be real, I was so busy reveling in my personally saving the entire world that I straight-up did not notice that until now. That’s gonna make the return trip a real magpie’s nest. But, hey, that gives us more time to catch up. I haven’t seen you since the miniature golf tournament! That was, what, over a year ago now? There’s gotta be a lot to catch up on. I mean, sure, that was also the  _ first _ time we met, and we didn’t even properly meet, but that just means there’s even  _ more _ to catch up on! Did you know that I’m less of a jerk now? Wait, did you know I was a jerk to begin with? Let me start this interaction over. Hi, Canyon.”

Canyon made a  _ get on with it _ gesture.

“Right, right. So, uh, what are the odds you can help us get back to the mainland? Our ride broke down, so we’ve gotta hitchhike or a small mountain nation could be invaded by cats from the future or something. My life has devolved into a fetch quest, you see.”

“I see,” Canyon echoed softly. She looked around, finally taking in the scene. Luckily it didn’t look like anyone besides Robin had taken serious injury, although Jake seemed like he might have been nursing something and Finn’s suit looked charbroiled. That relief let her breathe a little easier, which made a big difference considering she could barely breathe before. Something odd caught her eye, though. “Finn? What are you holding?”

Finn still couldn’t hear her, but Robin copied the question into the radio. After listening to his response, zhe repeated it to Canyon. “He says it’s the Night Sword. Wait, why did I bother asking him? I knew that.”

“The — wait, what‽ Finn, you ridonkulous blobfish, you’ve doomed us all!”

Canyon’s outrage was visible enough for Finn to recoil despite not being able to hear her, but Robin stretched into the way. “Don’t worry about it,” zhe said. “That’s the danger that we’ve just got done vanquishing. Did we not explain what we were doing here? We should explain what we were doing here. So basically—”

“No time,” Beau cut in, using the same spell but using a spectral blue shovel as a microphone instead. “We should get moving before our suits run out of oxygen. Canyon, can you help us out or not?”

“Hey!” griped Robin. “Don’t copy my spell that I copied from Charlie.”

“Have you not been paying attention? Copying other people’s magic is my specialty. Canyon, answer the question.”

She nodded slowly, but she wasn’t happy about it. What kind of jerk put this much pressure on an injured woman who might be nursing a concussion, anyway? “I can make an upcurrent to take us to the surface faster,” she said; “you’ll probably want to get to the surface before you run out of air, so we’ll make that the priority. Then you can try to call for a rescue ship.” Robin relayed this to the others.

“Or we could make the call now,” countered Beau.

“Beau says we should just make the call now,” Robin repeated.

“Oh, yeah,” said Canyon, “we could just make the call now. Cragg?”

“On it.” She walked away from an irritated Banana Man, looking at Beau as she took out her sealphone and began absentmindedly punching in some numbers. “I’m making the call now, Beau.” He gave her a thumbs-up.

A beat.

Cragg put the phone down. “There’s no service.”

* * *

A dozen or so leagues away, a wireframe tower of Tobin bronze stood crooked. This tower was part of a vast underwater relay network transmitting electromagnetic signals between computers all across Ooo to let them serve as a single vast supercomputer, effectively shrinking the size of the world to nil. Think of it like the 21st-century Internet, because that’s exactly what it is with no alteration or exaggeration.

The trouble was, this particular tower wasn’t supposed to be crooked. One of its legs had been eaten through by some phantasmal force, corroding the brass alloy and collapsing that tilt so the entire tower had a mean lean. Consequently, it was no longer broadcasting those sweet, sweet ones and zeroes everyone loves so much. Since Ooo’s cell network was built off the back of the hypernet, this was pretty bad.

The lone seahorse technician working at the remote monitoring station got to the end of his comic he was reading and finally looked up. There was an alert on a screen in front of him, prompting him to glance at a camera feed of the tower’s site.  _ Huh, _ he noted.  _ I don’t think the tower’s supposed to look like that. _ He’d have to let his boss know once his shift ended in a few hours.

If he’d bothered to look up a bit sooner, he would have noticed a large shape approach on the fuzzy video feed, blast the tower from a distance, and then turn around. The water dragon was on the move.

* * *

“One problem at a time, please,” pleaded Banana Man. “Let’s just get to the surface. I can already feel myself running low on oxygen.”

“That’s, like, totes impossible, my guy,” said Finn. “You should know for a fact that these things are good for way longer than that, since you’re the one who built them.”

“Okay, so maybe I’m just getting claustrophobic.”

Canyon couldn’t hear the conversation, but she grasped the tone of it. Before she did anything else, she made one last directed glance around, finally seeing what she had been looking for. She walked over, bent down, and picked up her discarded quadrident, wiping it off with the corner of her shirt so she could pretend it hadn’t gotten pawed up by smonsters. Raising it surfaceward, she willed the current to scoot down to meet her before coming back up, creating an elevator.

She turned around, gesturing for the others to follow, before grabbing onto the invisible column of water and shooting up. The sudden acceleration did not do her head any favors; the word around her began, appropriately, to swim. Even so, she maintained her concentration. This was more important. She could and would go see a doctor as soon as she got Finn and the others to relative safety. She looked down to confirm that Cragg was directing the others in how to actually use the currents, but she knew she’d ascend much faster than any of them. She had more practice, after all. That was definitely how that worked.

She spotted it before she’d reached the top of the trench — a distant shape, serpentine and bulbous, cutting a sinusoidal path through the water as it approached. At first she thought it was a sea serpent, since those were common enough in the sea of monsters. It probably wouldn’t pose a threat to them, since they tended to roost in oceanic mountain ranges and wouldn’t be caught in this part of the ocean except as part of a migraction. They were fascinating creatures, moving from place to place not based on the cycle of the seasons but the changing of the very ocean currents. Canyon had always wanted one as a pet.

It wasn’t until the creature drew to an impossibly-fast halt, opening its toothy maw, that Canyon realized her mistake. She still held herself in the updraft, but now she was shaking. This was a water dragon. What was one doing out here? There were none of the things which interest dragons; there were scarcely even people, and the Sea of Sure Death had far meatier fare and was right nearby. It must have followed the sub here. Had Cragg mentioned that? She couldn’t recall. Her head hurt.

Too late, she noticed the jet of bubbles streaking toward her from the dragon’s maw. She raised her quadrident and spun it as quickly as she could, attempting to mitigate some of the attack. Indeed, she did partially reduce it, but a hundred minus one may as well be a hundred. A stream of superheated water slammed into her chest, knocking her out of the upcurrent and into the downcurrent, and she fell.

* * *

When Banana Man saw the falling Canyon, he announced to the others that he’d got her, then swam out of the current to catch her. He was small, but working with machines all his life had made him strong. That didn’t matter, since their relative momenta meant she pushed him down as soon as he caught her semi-limp form in his outstretched arms, current or no current. Still, it did mean he didn’t immediately drop her.

This jolt was enough to bring her to her senses, as she saw the other heroes look concernedly at her as the rose past. “Yo, what’s going on?” Robin asked, once again using zhir microphone spell. Zhe stuck zhir neck out, so that zhir head stood in place looking at Canyon and Banana Man as zhir body moved on.

Canyon whispered it so weakly that only Banana Man could hear it through his suit, so he repeated it into the radio. “Water dragon.”

“Wait, what?” asked Finn. “Water ‘bout a dragon? Wait, no, hold on, there’s been so much nonsense — oh. Oh, right, that water dragon.”

Jake stretched his paw over to Fin, tapping on his helmet and pointing.

“Oh, right,” Finn repeated.  _ “That _ water dragon.”

The beast was massive, much larger than it had been when it had attacked the sub. Its powerful body dominated the upward view as it approached, twirling directly above them in figure-eights, Canyon’s fading currents rippling off its undulating bilge-sacs. No, it wasn’t larger; it was closer, and growing closer still as it wound its way down. At first Finn wasn’t sure why it was taking its time, but then he noticed its massive eyes focused on him, and he realized the beast was studying them.

_ Narts. It’s smart. _

He had 3 reactions, upon having this epiphany. The first, and most prudent, was to immediately scramble to relay that to the rest of his team. Unfortunately, he knew that warning wouldn’t reach Cragg. He hadn’t spent much time with the girl, but from what little he had, she was the person who most needed that warning. Therefore, his second reaction — simultaneous with the first — was to activate the jets on his suit, propelling himself toward the water elemental to tackle her out of the way.

His third reaction was to realize that, since he was now moving, the dragon would probably be done passively observing now. Much to Cragg’s confusion, he shoved her back, putting himself in front of her and the Night Sword in front of him.

It was good he did that. When the beam of hot vapor shot toward him, it might have changed Cragg’s state of matter somewhat irrevocably. Instead, the sheer kinetic force of it socked him like an angel, and both he and the elemental were launched down to meet Banana Man and Canyon where the spiraling current was decaying into eddies.

Peace Master and Jake were the next to respond, their battle-tested reflexes already on high alert. Jake stretched a paw toward the beast, thinking to muzzle it against its breath attack. PM opted for a more direct approach. He had Shark’s Bite in one hand, borrowed from Finn once the human had found his old, cooler sword, and on the other he wore a ring charged with a limited-use aegis charm. It was designed to defend against demons and mercenaries, but it would work just as well against dragons. He grabbed onto Jake’s wrist to get momentum, and just as he grabbed onto the beast’s maw, the exorcist slashed upwards with his sword, keeping the aegis at the ready in case it tried to bite down at him.

Dragons have tails, though. Quicker than a beast that size should have been able to move, it twisted around and smacked them. Jake’s hand was launched so far that the rest of him went with him, and everyone heard the thud of his impacting the canyon’s wall. PM’s aegis helped cushion the blow a little, so he didn’t go quite so far (or else he’d have died), but the force of the hit dislocated his shoulder and sent him flying — without the sword.

The worst part? Due to the beast’s chitinous scales, he hadn’t even scratched it, only succeeding in snapping the sword in half. All he’d done was make it angrier, which the three remaining heroes hadn’t realized was possible.

The dragon let out another breath attack, but this time Robin was ready. Zhe unleashed a beam of energy back up at it, and the two attacks met in the middle, scattering and refracting into a boiling rainbow. Rainbow colors spilled out and into the surrounding ocean, iridescent and ephemeral and worrisome as an oil slick. Macy saw the hackles on Robin’s neck, though. She knew this wasn’t a winning fight.

“Beau!” she shouted into the radio. “You got a spell for this?”

“Sure do,” came the magician’s response, cool and cocksure as ever. E stared up at the dragon, pumping out more hot air than one might have imagined could fit in its lungs. Raising a hand over eir head, e made a snapping motion with eir fingers and said, “Razzamafoo.”

E disappeared.

Robin let out a strangled, “What‽” at this, which knocked off zhir concentration enough for the jet of the dragon’s attack to finally break through zhir optical attack. It slammed into zhir, pancaking zhir and launching zhir downward before the hot water gave way to the law of convection and bubbled up.

And then there was one.

* * *

Thousands of miles away, in a cave embedded in a desert cliffside not near Wizard City, a different Jake the Dog sat in front of an old bird nest and watched. This nest was not his; it had once belonged to a goblin king named Xergiok. During a brief period of blindness and humility, the goblin had abandoned his tyrannical ways, instead choosing to tend to the giant birds that called this desert home. He’d made the cave into a sheltered nest for them, tending to their sickly and young and protecting them from the harshities of the desert.

He’d quickly reverted to tyranny after regaining his sight, and that species of birds was now extinct, but future!Jake liked to focus on the positives. Like how he was positive that after he released the Sisters Sergeant, they had probably gone right to their leaders to tell them everything, despite promises to the contrary he’d extracted. Being cleverer than he let on, he’d been sure to say just as many false things as true so they wouldn’t be believed and his secret would stay such, but regardless, whoever was in charge now would be sure to change all of their plans so that the information he’d gained would become useless. That level of reorganization should delay any big plans of theirs until the timeline caught up.

Perhaps Jake was feeling a bit of empty nest syndrome since letting the sisters go; it wouldn’t be the first time. Strictly speaking, though, the nest wasn’t empty. Otherwise there wouldn’t be much to watch. No, as he sat in the stagnant cave, arms wrapped around his legs in anticipation, the bitter-smelling nest of hay that sat before him was occupied by a single object — a shimmering white egg, which looked like it had been photoshopped into this reality by a lazy graphic design student who’d just figured out how to make lens flares. He’d been doing this for a while now, and the practice had become meditative.

His ear twitched as it registered a faint noise from somewhere in the cave. Glancing away briefly, he could spy no possible cause of the disturbance. The tarp he’d draped over the entrance to the cave was unperturbed.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Hello?” No response. If there was an intruder, they were a rude one.

There it was again! It was more distinct that time, like metal hitting against porcelain, except duller. The high-pitched frequency and the cave’s smooth, hard walls conspired to hide the sound’s origin from even his impressive perception. “Hello?” he asked again, because one could never be too polite. “Macy? That you?”

Macy was not there, of course. Macy was currently under the ocean fighting a water dragon. She had no idea this second Jake even existed, and the last time he’d seen her had been when she fought a different dragon, which had left this egg behind. Jake knew this; he was there with Macy, after all, and it wasn’t like the events of today were something he could forget. On the other paw, he was also here, so she feasibly could be as well. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure where she  _ was, _ but he could worry about that once the timeline caught up.

There came the noise again, followed by a tiny squelch. Jake was startled from this reflective state, so it took a moment for his eyes to focus on the egg again. When they did, he thought he saw something on the top of it, but it was too indistinct to make out. He got in closer and confirmed his suspicion.

The egg had cracked. It was time to hatch.

* * *

Macy could tell that the water dragon was winded from firing its breath for so long. She also knew (though she dared not look away to confirm) that, though most of her party was dazed or worse, she’d probably be able to count on Cragg’s help coming up; Finn had protected her, and she had a fast recovery time. Sadly, that probably wouldn’t be soon enough. The dragon was already pumping its gills. It was time to act.

She swam up. She didn’t have any prior experience with the suit — she had no idea how to turn on the jets, and hadn’t bothered to ask when she had the chance — but she still had the current, and her arms were significantly thicker, so she might have actually been a faster swimmer for the added bulk.

She spotted what she was looking for, spiraling in a fading convective eddy a meter or so below the dragon’s mighty snout. Ignoring the growing (and entirely warranted) terror, she grasped her target: Shark’s Tooth, having been dropped by Peace Master in his own failed attack. The blade was longer than any she’d held before, but it cut through the water so smoothly that she hardly felt any extra awkwardness beyond what the suit imposed. Continuing forward, she swung upwards, hoping to score a critical hit on its nearest vital organ while trying very hard not to think about what that would entrail I mean entail.

The dragon’s breath attack hit her before the sword could hit it. She was knocked backwards at significant speed, made more significant by the fact that the dragon was now diving as it attacked. On the bright side, this meant she had to do less work to close the distance. Plus, once her internal organs stopped rattling around from the impact, she found she wasn’t as out of commission as everyone else. Her famed durability counted for more than thick-headedness.

She hoped the dragon wasn’t aware of this. She subtly changed her grip on the sword, into something she thought based on pure instinct might make it better for lunging, then got ready to slip back into the current when the dragon got closer and use the energy for a fast, unblockable attack. It was the perfect plan, really, except that with her suit covering her, she couldn’t feel that Canyon’s current was fading without her continual maintenance and was too weak to be used that way. Hence the dragon’s dive.

Cragg could feel that, though, and as Macy predicted, she had recovered quickly. She had no idea what was going on, but as she pushed the dazed Finn off of her and onto Banana Man, she saw that Macy was the one holding the sword — and thus the one who needed an assist. Using her secret technique, she shot upwards and pushed Macy from behind.

Startled, the nut briefly flailed, but offensive instincts took over. She’d broken formation for a jab, but she had a better idea now. She spun, taking some torque from the convective eddies of the very attack that had knocked her back, the ghastly sword in her hand making her just hydrodynamic enough for this crazy plan to work. She was a spinning top of death and destruction, and not for the first time, either.

The sword met flesh. The dragon roaded. She’d struck its gills.

“First blood!” she exclaimed, conveniently ignoring every other incapacitating attack in the fight thus far. She kept spinning, bringing the sword around again in an attempt to make  _ second _ blood. She could already see that she wasn’t going to get that lucky, though. The dragon’s head had spasmed out of reach once the hit landed, leaving an arc of billowing crimson clouds.

_ Not so fast! _ The dragon’s tail had whipped around for a counterattack, as it had against Peace Master, but she had just enough torque left to dodge. She suffered only the glancingest of blows, which rang through the glass of her helmet and fully reversed the direction of her spin. The sound echoed in her heads, forming a rhythmic harmony with the beating of her heart and the pulsing of the ocean’s deep currents.

Those currents… with Canyon and the dragon breath’s interference faded, she could hear them now, not with her ears but with the ears beyond her ears. The water flowed in its own way here, in a path determined by brine and sulfur more than by heat and tide. It was a different set of rules, but the way it worked was familiar. Something suddenly made sense to Macy, and she wasn’t sure what. All she knew was that some pathway in her mind, previously closed, had opened.

She didn’t have time to peek through the door before she felt something a bit harder than a ding. At first she thought the dragon had breathed on her again, but when her eyes refocused, she saw that it had chosen the simpler option. It had dove straight down, headbutting her so hard her face slammed against the front of her suit as she fell. It actually hurt this time.  _ Oh, and there’s a hairline fracture. _ The glass had multiple layers, so she wasn’t in danger yet, but the familiar panic welling up inside her didn’t know that.

She felt another familiar sensation as Robin cushioned her fall. She saw the rainicorn-dog’s face loom over her, all war and protection, and security fought panic to a standstill in her heart. The winner was the emotion that had arrived just before — epiphany.

“You okay, Macy?” asked Robin. Zhir heart was obviously full of worry.

Ordinarily, Macy would have told her friend that she should have been asking that question. Instead, she smiled. “Better than that. I’m about to win.”

* * *

“How?” asked Amélie Faucher, all decked out in her full guard regalia. “With all due respect, sir, what you’re asking… it’s a lot on short notice.”

Seated in the chair next to her, and wearing a much more ceremonial version of the same uniform, her lieutenant Peter Stachio let out a cynical laugh. “What’s that, eh? Thinkin’ you can’t do what you’ve gotta? In that case, maybe you should leave it to me. Delegate, as it were.”

“It’s not about whether I  _ can _ do it,” she snapped back. “It’s about whether anyone  _ should. _ Temerity does not good jurisprudence make.”

“Neither does meekness. Besides, we’re not judges. We don’t need to be prudent, we just need to catch the bad guys.”

“A sentiment which is entirely contradictory to the whole premise of rule of law.  _ Lieutenant,” _ she fumed, putting emphasis on her use of the title as a not-so-subtle way of indicated he ought to have done the reciprocal if he knew what was best for him, “I don’t keep you on staff just so you can petulantly disagree with me at every turn.”

“Is that so?” asked a third voice, the only other one in the room. The Duke of Nuts was never an imposing figure, but wearing an ill-fitted tuxedo and his trademark purple hat while seated across his desk from two uniformed guards made him look even more ridiculous. His eyes, though, were set with more than enough determination to make up for it. “Because that’s all the two of you have done since I called you in.” It was a low blow, he knew, but his top two guards’ personal rivalry had derailed this meeting long enough, and his eldest son was trying to teach him that some blows needed to be lowered.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Mél said hastily. “I’ll try to get him to stop.” Pete glowered at her, less than grateful for that particular deflection, but said nothing.

“Excellent!” the Duke proclaimed, clapping his hands together. “I’m sure that now that we’re all working together, we can find a way to bring this task within the realm of plausibility.”

“Plausibility isn’t what I’m worried about, sir. It’s deniability. Securing the entire undermountain is possible if we train up more guards and devote additional resources, but our constitution places strict legal limits on  _ why _ we can do that. Once Ambassador Corn reports back to Princess Bubblegum, we’ll be lucky if the Nut Guard can operate independently at all. We should contact her ourselves, have  _ her _ provide security against—”

“Absolutely not!” shouted Pete. “If we give her royal pinkness that kind of presence and authority, we’ll be downgraded from protectorate to province faster than you can say, ‘toxic maternalism.’ It’s an invitation for tyranny, with all due respect.”

“What did I just say about petulant disagreement?”

“The lieutenant is right,” said the Duke. “We must handle this ourselves. As I understand it, Icy University has already been alerted to the danger posed by the subterranean portal. They’re going to want security, and we can provide that, since our agreement with them is a political one. That should appease the Princess, I hope.”

Pete tugged a wrinkle out of his shirt-collar. “Yes.” His tone of voice indicated that appeasing was not what he had hoped to do to the Princess.

Mél rapped her knuckles on the table, an unconscious nervous habit to distract herself from rubbing Pete’s disappointment in his face. “Alright, but if we do that, there’s another problem. Namely, we’d need to actually concentrate our forces around the university researchers. Not a particularly efficient use of resources if our goal is proactive defense.”

“We’ll have to muddle through under those restrictions, then. I hope it’s not too much of a burden, but I do trust you to figure it out. You can go for now.”

As the two guards left his office, Mél closing the door slowly on her way out, the Duke of Nuts leaned back in his chair and moaned. He didn’t like hiding things from people he was supposed to trust, but he was sure there were holes in his security that went beyond Archie. His elder daughter’s betrayal had shaken him, and even now he was second-guessing every decision. At least he hadn’t lied outright, though he was starting to wonder if that would have been more honest.

Still, he didn’t want to be taken advantage of, and he regrettably knew what that would entail. He knew the historic import of the mines beneath Jugland. There were yet valuable metals down there. There was uranium. If the Ice King’s minions — witting or otherwise — at Icy University wanted to get their creaky little hands on it, he wanted to keep an eye on it. He wouldn’t let his duchy be caught in the middle of another war.

And if his younger daughter Macy’s heroic reputation made that position untenable, as he increasingly thought it might, he didn’t want to be caught unprepared. This was how he would win.

* * *

“Win?” Robin tilted zhir head. “I mean, I guess I don’t have a better plan than to trust you, but seems unlikely.”

Macy’s manic grin shortened to a disgruntled half-smirk as her eyes refocused from the doting rainicorn-dog who had caught her to the dragon who was the reason she needed catching.. “Watch me,” she said, before grabbing Shark’s Tooth in both hands and beginning to hum.

She had no idea what to expect as she pushed off, launching Robin down so she could go up a bit faster. She didn’t know whether any of this would work. But she  _ felt _ it would, someplace deeper than her soul. She hummed in harmony with currents she could barely feel and not at all see, and she swung her first hero’s sword in counterpoint with that. Her motion was not practiced, nor was it clean. It was, however, perfect for what it was, so whatever it did, she knew it would do it well.

For its part, the dragon let out another boiling belch. Macy’s swing, timed as it was with the micro-ebb and flow of the water, and carried out by such a wicked blade, cut that belch in half. Rather than striking her again and potentially exacerbating the crack in her helmet, twin streaks of bubbles went around and past her, dissipating in the waters below.

What goes down must come up, whenever what goes down is a hot liquid traveling through a medium of the same liquid at a lower temperature. When this happened, it created two convective upcurrents, which were just strong enough for two people who had been counted out of the fight to hitch a ride and tap back in. From behind Macy, Canyon and Finn shot upward, quadrident and sword raised like fork and knife. The dragon had been just too much focused on Macy to properly react to them, and their weapons sank into those weird sac thingies dragons have on the sides of their heads that I’m not really sure what they do. (I mean, yeah, I’m omniscient enough, but I don’t know anything I don’t  _ want _ to know.)

The dragon roaded and thrashed, knocking the two heroes back, but now it was Robin and Cragg’s turns. One of them hit the beast with a continuous beam of rainbow energy, while the other pelted it repeatedly with tiny hammers. You can guess who did what. Hint: The one who squirmed backwards with hate in its eyes was the dragon.

It opened its mouth to fire one more time, but evidently someone was sick of that. Jake’s hand reached out from the distance to pinch its mouth shut with two enormous fingers, before the hand retracted to bring the rest of the dog closer. He was covered all over with golden bands of light, including on his helmet. Peace Master rode in on his literal tail, but he was clearly too tired from summoning those constructs to do anything else for the fight.

He didn’t need to, either. The dragon was right spooked now, and as its rapidly-darting eyes found Macy’s gaze, hers was fierce enough to keep them transfixed. She closed her eyes and opened her mind, casting out her senses to find its. She gave the dragon something in exchange, though. She gave it her fear.

All that fear, yet none of the conscious mental discipline to overcome it. It was no surprise the dragon, upon yanking its head free of Jake’s grip, turned tail and fled, shooting upward at full speed. As it fled, it formed a different kind of bubble — a cavitation bubble, sort of like a sonic boom except different in literally every way — and our heroes rode that up toward the surface in the dragon’s wake. Don’t worry, Banana Man was there too.

The hunter fled. The quarry pursued. Hundreds of miles away, an egg cracked.

Nobody present there knew exactly what had changed. Even if they had, none of them yet had the context to realize why the hatching of this one dragon egg, in a cave overlooked by a dog from the future, briefly distracted every dragon in Ooo from whatever task they had been pursuing. In many cases, where those tasks were in the vein of mindless destruction and carnage, this distraction was beneficent. Here, though, it served to snap the water dragon out of its empathically-induced fear.

It did not stop. It turned, sliding into that new arc so smoothly that nobody knew what was happening until they had no time to react. Fleeing had not taken any sort of toll on it, so it now had in its serpentine diaphragm the kind of breath that would knock any of them well out of the ability to fight back. For a brief moment before it unleashed it, it locked eyes with Macy once again, and this time it was she who remembered what fear was.

Canyon pulsed a sphere of water to knock the others out of the path of the upcoming attack, but she’d reached her limit. Once this one hit, she was knocked out cold again. Cragg caught her before she started to sink too far, but she knew that was her teacher’s true limit. She left to get her medical attention. She retreated.

Finn and Jake thought they were ready with a counterattack, but the dragon was even faster than before. Along with the fear, it had taken some of the reflexes Macy had trained to have kick in alongside it. It dodged their attacks easily, slipping around Finn’s sword and Jake’s paws to snap its fearsome jaws in front of Banana Man. The sheer terror sufficed to knock  _ him _ out.

Peace Master caught the banana with one arm and attempted to do something — anything — to help with the other, but that was it. Robin fired off again, but the dragon dodged and flicked a fin at zhir horn, disrupting the beam. Macy tried to swing at it, but she missed completely. Her humming was all out of tune from fear. This was it.

The dragon swam above them once more, making an ominous figure eight above them. Even the very sky, now visible through the just-out-of-reach sea surface above, seemed to darken in anticipation of its next, horrible breath.

A cannonball shot through its head, killing it instantly.

Macy swam up toward the surface, which was nearer than it had seemed in the throes of fear. The ominous shape turned out to be a massive cruiseliner, so fitted out with flags and lights and of course weapons that it looked like an explosion of metal frozen in time. Along its hull, just above a plate where a cannon was retracting, was painted its name in large, serifed lettering:  _ ISC Two-Bread. _ This was a human vessel.

She finally breached the surface, spying a familiar figure leaning over the silver railing. Rhombeaufortchamp was holding onto eir hat in the powerful ocean breeze, smiling and laughing to eirself about something. Next to em stood a tall, blonde, light-skinned human woman in a white cap, gazing into the water beside Macy with a look halfway between relief and exhaustion. Macy turned to see what the lady was looking at.

Finn had also surfaced, and was the first to take off his helmet as he looked up at the passenger. “Mom?” he asked, his own relief apparent. “What are you doing here?”

* * *

Beau was happy to explain it all, if for no other reason than to end the death glares e was getting from the others. E had not abandoned them, after all; instead, e had teleported to the deck of this ship, which e knew was on its way to Beachport. Alerting Minerva (via her robotic avatar) that her son was in danger more than sufficed to redirect the ship in order to provide some aid in the fight against the water dragon. E swore up and down that e couldn’t have simply teleported back since the water would have prevented eir arrival, though e was notably silent on whether e would have had that not been the case.

All that remained was the wrap-up. Minerva was able to tend to the group’s various physical injuries, and though she was notably deficient in treatments of the psychological variety, she passed around recommendations for others more inclined in that field. Robin refused treatment, on the grounds that the infrared signals between Minerva’s avatar and her shipboard modem gave zhir a headache, but zhe promised to see a doctor about zhir minor bruising when zhe got ashore, and Macy promised to uphold that.

Before the boat docked, Finn finally pulled himself away from his mother and asked Macy to meet him on the bow of the ship. He’d shaved off his beard and put on a nice topcoat to match his mother’s avatar’s stylish lab coat, and his robotic arm was stowed in his backpack, but with two swords crossing his back, he looked more the hero of Macy’s dreams than ever. A year ago, if this had happened, she would have squeed like a little girl. Now she only squeed  _ internally, _ like a  _ big _ girl.

“I’m gonna call Tiff once I get ashore,” said Finn. “He, Amaranth, and I are gonna head back down to deal with the portal.”

“Okay.” Macy was surprised that she didn’t sound disappointed. She knew a part of her was; this was supposed to be her mission, after all, so shouldn’t she be there when it concluded? But a bigger part realized this wasn’t about what  _ she _ wanted. Maybe the bigger part of responsibility, more than knowing what to do, was being humble enough not to try to do everything.

“Now that I’ve got the Night Sword back, it’ll be a piece of cake. And I mean the good cake, the kind Jake only makes for special ocakesions.” A beat. “Which is why I want you to have Shark’s Tooth.”

“Sounds good,” replied Macy, staring at the distant shoreline. She couldn’t properly see the beach, even with her incredible vision — the curve of the Earth was just wrong — but somewhere between the spray of mist into the sky and the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the waves, she thought she could make out a refracted shimmer of foothills. The sight, mixed with the smell of salt and clarity that saturated the air, made her want taffy. “Wait, what?”

She turned to Finn, skilting as she gripped the slippery deck railing with one hand, but he had already grabbed the jagged white blade from his back and was holding it out to her sideways. “I don’t really need it anymore,” he explained. “The Night Sword has better curses on it. In fact, I think it might be  _ more _ cursed now, so that’s something I’ll need to check out. The way you used Shark’s Tooth back there was pretty cool, and I bet you could become a real master with it if you got the chance.”

Slowly, reverently, she reached out to take the sword from Finn’s hand. In air rather than water, it was heavier than before, but it was still surprisingly light for its size. She wondered if it was made of actual tooth, which she happened to know was not made of bone, because she was a nerd. “Neato.” She took her other hand off the railing and leaned on the sword like a walking stick, which was ill-advised and immediately caused it to snap and herself to fall. “Whoa!”

The noise attracted the attention of some others — including distracting Beau, Jake, Robin, and Minerva from a no-doubt thrilling game of euchre-baccarat — but Finn managed to catch her arm with his before she even hit the deck. With a mighty pull, he righted her, nodding in understanding as she found her balance. There was no judgement. Macy remembered why she liked being around him.

“Not to look a horse’s gift in the mouth or anything,” she said as she examined the slowly-growing snapped end of the sword ‘handle’, “but are you sure you won’t need this for anything? What if you lose the Night Sword sealing some other ancient evil or whatever?”

Finn shrugged. “I’ll just borrow Jake’s sword. He never uses it anyway.”

“Hey!” Jake protested. “I use it all the time, I’ll have you know.”

“Yeah, for cutting prosciutto,” Finn called back. “Buy a dang knife, dude.”

Macy stuffed the half Shark’s Tooth in her backpack, where she could immediately hear it cut through an algebra textbook like a knife through quadratic equations. “I don’t know what prosciutto is, but I’ll never cut it with this sword,” she promised.

“I should hope not,” said Robin. “That thing’s made of bone. It would be unsanitary.”

“Teeth aren’t bones,” corrected Minerva. “They have nerve endings, for one thing.”

“Psh. Whatever, nerd.”

* * *

“Psh. Whatever, nerd.” With white hair, grey skin, and black robes draped over a stickly frame, the wizard was in no position to go about judging the nerdosity of the traffic fairy who had detained him at the outskirts Wizard City, but hypocrisy was just one of many things that had never stopped him before even when it really ought to have. “Like I even care about your stupid crosswalk. I’ll cross where I like.”

“You’ll get eaten by a bus,” snarled the fairy. “Maybe you should.”

“The bus knows better. Nobody messes with Ash.”

He walked across the street and through the illusory canyon wall which separated Wizard City from the rest of the world. Out here, the setting sun was truly phenomenal, and the transitional desert air was, for a brief moment, neither scorching hot nor freezing cold. Ash wasn’t here to admire the scenery, though. That was for poets and other useless people. He was here to talk to someone, which was almost as useless, but desperate times and all that.

Something had happened earlier today, that was for sure. Grand Master Wizard had put out a notice that nothing had happened, which was proof enough, but then at the same time the Researchitorium had quietly opened several new positions in their magical beast research division. If there was some pie, Ash wanted a slice of it, but he didn’t think he could pull off ‘respectable’ long enough to muddle through the application process. He hated being out of the loop. It made him feel like there were things going on that were more important than him, which gave him ennui and indigestion.

In order to rectify this, he would have to put himself as close to the center of the next thing-to-happen as possible, so with that in mind, he had accepted a rather unorthodox request for a meetup just outside Wizard City. Some donkus he’d never heard of wanted to ply his power for selfish needs, and Ash was all about that. As long as he could satisfy his  _ own _ selfish needs along the way, he was down for branching out into a little conspiracy.

He came across a shadowy crevice in the canyon, orders of magnitude smaller than the entrance to Wizard City, and slipped inside. “Alright, I’m here, bruh,” he said in a low whisper. “Your letter was a little weird, and your handwriting’s downright awful, but I’m willing to hear you out. Let’s talk terms.”

“Yes, let’s,” agreed his client, one Masse Yvoire, wearing a dark blue-grey hooded cloak drawn over his face. “You and I have much to discuss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, it's that guy. Haven't seen him in a while.
> 
> So, yeah, the main plot of the 8-parter is over, seven chapters in. The exact same thing happened last time, so you really shouldn't be surprised. There's more yet, though, which is why this is an 8-parter. Remember, this whole quest kicked off in the second chapter, not the first; we've still got to bookend this, like we did last time. And with Masse making a re-emergence, who knows what that bookend might consist of?
> 
> Okay, but seriously, I'm glad to finally be able to do some actual Masse content coming up soon. He's a big part of my vision of the series, but due to its structure, I can only work him in in measured amounts, which means I don't have as much time to develop his character as I do for some others. He still hasn't been face to face with any of the main characters outside of flashbacks since Episode 1! Of Season 1! Well, this may or may not end in the near future, you hear me?
> 
> Oh yeah, and I guess Macy fought another dragon or whatever. It's not like this is the first time, and Minerva kill-stole, but I guess that's cool. I guess. (That psychic thing she did was an extension of the thing that happened with the boar in episode 1 of _this_ season.) As for what the deal is with the egg? You'll just have to wait and see, I guess.
> 
> …this episode was unusual in how few unusual things there were about it. Pretty much everything here was either planned ahead of time, or just the natural consequence of stringing those things together. The stuff with the dragon egg and the scene in Castle Jugland weren't part of the original plan, but the first was an obvious addition pretty early on and the second is a solidification of a direction I was already planning to head with Jugland politics. Sorry, there's not much in the way of trivia.
> 
> The discussion prompt is: Is the Internet cool or what? You can talk to so many people with varying interests, learn things about yourself you never knew, and get yelled at by actual horrible people. What's not to love? Besides large chunks of it. Yeah, it's a mixed blessing, but what isn't? This was a bad prompt.
> 
> Finally, your preview:  
> The djinni waitress before em cleared her throat. “Sir, this is a Windy’s.”


	9. Join the Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau invites Robin into the Crabapple Crew.
> 
> Chapter 8 of 8-parter “Below”; chapter 27 overall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, our long storyline nightmare is over! I kid, I love writing these storylines, but let me tell you, I wasn't exactly disappointed when I got to write more episodic adventures once this ended. There are some fun things in store, some of which I've already written in advance, and some of which even my alpha reader [Emmyllou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmyllou) doesn't know about yet. I'm excited to show it to y'all, in due time.
> 
> In addition to the publication of the official end of the “Below” storyline and the release of the [third bonus story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691544) — which you should totally check out — today is also the day I'm giving up on this year's National Novel Writing Month. The reasons are somewhat specific to my writing style, and rest assured that it won't have an impact on the release schedule of this fic, I just think I ought to let y'all know since I told you about the fact that I was participating.
> 
> Your discussion prompt is: What's a time you've joined a club or other casual social group where you feel your membership has positively impacted your life, especially your mental health? Heady subject, I know.

By the time  _ ISC Two-Bread _ pulled into what passed for port at the lonely pier with the miraculously open toffee stand, the sun had set behind them. At this hour, most of the crew’s actual passengers, including the uploaded consciousness of Minerva Campbell, had any compelling reason to debark rather than spend one more night aboard (though Minerva had little need to debark her robotic avatar regardless). The only ones who actually got off at Beachport that evening were the hapless crew of adventurers the boat had stopped to rescue.

In point of fact, Robin had actually wanted to stay aboard the vessel as well, on the grounds that there were some very comfortable water beds in the guest suite Minerva had offered up to zhir. However, Macy was intent on getting home as soon as possible; she’d worried her father enough for a lifetime the last time she ran away from home, so she didn’t want to repeat that experience for at least another few months. Robin was loath to abandon the water bed, but zhe was even reticenter to abandon Macy, so zhe conceded.

With her father busy organizing somesuch or other back home, and Pen driving their mother to anger management at a specialty place  _ way _ out of town, Macy’s other brother Galé was picking them up. She wasn’t sure how he’d managed to drive all the way to Beachport so fast in his beat-up clunker of a car; she suspected he’d taken a shortcut through some sort of demon realm, or possibly goblin country. Either way, when  _ Two-Bread _ docked at the Beachport pier, she could make out headlights on the beach that she knew must belong to him.

Macy and Robin said their final goodbyes quickly, then hopped onto the pier without waiting for the landing strip to lower. Robin lowered zhirself down quite gracefully, like a vine unfurling in the morning light. Macy faceplanted, then got up and dusted herself off as if she meant to do that. The chilly breeze beckoned them faster toward the heated interior of Galé’s car. Well, after they stopped by the taffy shop to get some saltwater taffy. There was always time for taffy.

As they approached, they saw the driver side door open, and indeed the silhouette of Galé lean out. “Och, there,  _ deirfiúr,” _ he called out to her in that distinctive yet mismatched accent whose presence nobody, least of all Macy, could explain. “I see’s ya got three bags o’ taffy. Be nae chance one’s fer yer fav’rite  _ deartháir?” _

“Nope,” Macy called back, breaking into a sprint. “One is for the family, when we get home. The other two are for Robin. Good to see you, bro.”

“Ta, good ta see ya.” He squinted. “Nae tha’ I c’n see too good ‘n this dark.”

“That’s okay. I can.” She reached the car, then vaulted over the top and got in the passenger side door, plopping the two bags of taffy she had been carrying onto the floor below. “By the way, when can I get one of these for myself?” she asked.

“The car?” He tapped the dashboard as he got back into the car and closed his own door. Macy nodded, so he continued. “When ye c’n best tha auto master in single combat. ‘Tis a woeful gauntlet.”

“That makes perfect sense.”

Robin had by this point unceremoniously tossed zhir own bag into the back seat, spilling taffy everywhere. Zhe was about to step in zhirself when zhe felt a tap on zhir rear shoulder, so zhe turned around.

Rhombeaufortchamp was standing there, hands clasped together, a look of solemnity on eir face. “Good, you haven’t left,” e said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about real quick-like.”

Robin flicked zhir ears toward the car; Galé was already starting the ignition. “You really cut it close, huh?”

“It seems so. Listen, Robin, I don’t say this lightly, but what you did back there was a truly brilliant display of magical ingenuity. If you hadn’t come along on this mission, I doubt it would have gotten done. As payment, how about you come to Wizard City sometime soon? Stop by my shop. I can help you pick out a new eye, and maybe give you a space to really develop your magic.”

“I’m already developing my magic, though. Charlie’s helping me.”

“Well, then, you should ask her about it. Either way, the eye offer is still open.” E stretched out a hand to shake.

Robin took it, shaking much more vigorously than Beau could possibly have prepared for. “It’s a date, then,” zhe said. “Except I’m not gonna  _ give _ you a date, on account of I like to keep people on their toes. It’s probably a jealousy thing ‘cause I don’t got none myself.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” E pulled eir hand back and stuffed it in eir pocket. “See you around.”

“Poor word choice,” Robin joked. Zhe suddenly noticed an extra weight in the paw zhe’d just shook with. Looking down, zhe unfurled it to see that there was a large object grasped inside it that hadn’t been there before — a crabapple, cool and wet and smelling fresh-picked. When zhe looked up to ask about it, Beau was gone, and zhe was left alone to contemplate this strange occurrence. Totally and completely alone.

_ “Oi, _ Robin,” Galé said, “shut yer door, I dinnae have time fer idlin’ aboot if’n we want tae get back home afore morn.”

* * *

“So, that’s the portal,” said Finn, standing slack and starting at the swirling purple vortex before him.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tiffany rolled his eyes. “I get it, it’s pretty. Now, chop chop, and emphasis on the chop! We don’t have time for idling about.”

“I agree with the cyborg,” breathed Amaranth, in that slow, meditative voice that sounded like wind through a wheat field and smelled like dust. “We would do well to be expedient.”

“Yeah, I know.” Finn drew the Night Sword, testing its balance in his hand. The compass was spinning right round, baby, right round, likely confused by the complex mechanisms in the lab that powered the portal before him. “I’ve never cut a hole in half before. Kinda sounds more like a riddle than something you’d actually do. Just wanna be sure everything’s in order before I do it. Amaranth, you gonna go through?”

The construct shook its head. “I have business to attend to on this side of time,” it rasped. “There are questions” A beat. “Outstanding. I do not suffer from senescence; if necessary, I can return to my time by waiting.”

“You do you, man.” Finn stepped up toward the portal, raised his sword high above, and slashed it diagonally downward. The purple split into red and blue, then spiraled into shadow. An absence vanished, replaced by mere nothing. A stitch in time came undone. There was no blowback, no release of energy, no new glow which suffused the sword and etched its energy into the cursed blade’s history. There was simply a large, circular machine which now stood idle as the day (two days ago) when it had activated.

Then Tiffany pointed his cybernetic arm at the machine, gripping its shoulder with his other hand for stability, morphed the arm into a cannon, and fired. Nothing visible came out, but the effects were certainly visible: the centuries-old light fixture that was the only remaining illumination source in the lab died; the holographic screen in Amaranth’s hand flickered; Finn’s phone buzzed, and when he stowed his sword to look at it, the display was briefly littered with artifacts.

“Hey, what was that about?” he demanded as he struggled to turn on the phone’s flashlight with one hand. “The situation was taken care of.”

“If you want to do something right, I need to do it myself,” Tiffany shouted back. “You may be a pitiful soft babyman, but I’m a big grown up boyman like you. As long as that machine stood un-desecrated, there would always be the possibility that someone would activate it, and then this whole thing would start over again. I’m not gonna stand here and let history repeat itself like an undergraduate student’s essay that they panic-wrote an hour and a half before the deadline and needed to pad out for length. When this day is written about in your histories, let it be known that I, Tiffany, was the one who had the gumption and foresight to prevent omniworldal disaster!”

“You’re certainly full of it,” agreed Finn.

“Why, thank you.”

* * *

“You’re welcome to come.”

Robin was standing in the open door of Macy’s bedroom, zhir inside form only taking up about half the doorway. Macy lay sprawled upon her messed-up bed, gazing up at the jungle-themed kaleidoscope that was her bedroom walls, aside from one wall dominated by a pristine desk and an open window from which the complicated, familiar smell of Jugland blew in. Her eyes were darting about the room, tracing the patterns of vines and branches rendered in silhouette on her wallpaper, but her ear slits were focused on Robin.

“I know I can,” she said after a pause. “Well, I know you think I can. But I also know I’m not really welcome in Wizard City. Your personal opinion of me isn’t the problem. Just go without me.”

“Okay,” said Robin tentatively. Zhe started to back out of the doorway, then stopped zhirself. “Before I go:  _ Now _ are you ready to talk about your feelings?”

“Robin, we talked for hours on the way back here. I’ve said all there is to say about them.”

“Okay,” zhe repeated. Once again, zhe backed out, only to stop. “And you’ll be fine on your own?”

“Robin!” Macy suddenly sat up in her bed, causing the springboard to creak. “I get it. You’re worried. I was in a bad mental place. But I’m not now, and you’re not the only person who can support me. I’ve got my dad, my bros, my therapist, and in a pinch I can call up Sprightly, though now that I’ve said it out loud I’m not sure how much help that skittish caffeine addict would be during a mental health crisis. I’ve got to talk to Jordathan about cutting her off.” A beat. “What was I talking about?”

“You’re fine,” Robin offered.

Macy nodded in agreement. “So go on, then. Just be sure to call.”

Robin blinked zhir one eye, though zhir other brow bunched up over zhir eyepatch in the attempt. “I’m not sure what I just walked right into, but I sure did do that. Well, if you’re sure, then bye.”

Macy waved Robin off, waited for zhir to walk out of sight, then sighed and collapsed back into her bed. She was lying, obviously. She hadn’t talked out all of her feelings on the car ride with Galé; otherwise I would have shown you that scene. If anything, she had more feelings than ever, and even fewer ways to make sense of them. She felt a certain way about Robin’s leaving for Wizard City on a mysterious invite from Beau, though she didn’t know what that way was.

Fear? No, the excuses she’d outlined were true enough; she wasn’t lying, not even to herself, when she said she wasn’t afraid of falling back into the metaphorical pit she’d been in while she was in that literal pit. Loneliness? Well, she’d had plenty of practice with that emotion being an unadopted orphan for twelve years. She would have recognized it. Boredom? Sure, why not.

It was the simplest answer, and it had the added benefit of being tangibly true right now. Coming off that terrifying high, what could she possibly fill her time with now? Schoolwork seemed trivial. With Archie gone, she had no siblings close to her own age. The archery club wasn’t serious enough, Jordathan and the Revs were busy getting ready for the school’s production of “The Magpie and the Mountain-Jay”, and anything she did with Sprightly that was exciting enough to hold her attention right now would probably be  _ so _ exciting that the poor thing would snap right in two. There was absolutely nothing for Macy to do, at all, period.

“Hey, Macy,” came the voice of her cousin Vesper, appearing mysteriously in her doorway as they were wont to do, wearing a white robe that could conceal just about anything beneath its form-hiding billows. Their voice was soft and obscure, as if their words were sculpted from shadow, and their cologne was peppermint. “Wanna go find weird bugs in the woods and sneak them into Ambassador Corn’s slippers?”

“Do I‽” Macy bolted upright once more. “Lead the way, cuz!”

With a running start, Vesper vaulted over Macy’s desk and leapt through the open window, grabbing onto the sill and beginning a rapid descent. Macy wasted nary a moment in throwing on her backpack, putting on the necklace with her lucky coin strung through, and following Vesper out and down. She couldn’t remember what she had been so in a rut over just now. She couldn’t even remember to close the window.

* * *

“Close the window,” intoned Beau in a low, ominous voice. “Let nobody disturb this ritual. This is a place of sanctity.”

The djinni waitress before em cleared her throat. “Sir, this is a Windy’s. Also, the windows  _ are _ closed.”

“I meant draw the blinds. Whatever. Can you do that?” She sighed, but complied.

Robin twitched zhir tail impatiently. The dim lighting in this cordoned-off section of the diner wasn’t doing any favors for zhir reduced eyesight, which hadn’t been great to begin with, and the smells wafting in from the main floor were making zhir hungry for things zhe knew would give zhir indigestion if zhe gave in to temptation. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you lead me to a secondary location. I thought you were taking me eye-shopping, not showing me your clubhouse.”

“This is related,” Beau promised. E waited until the waitress had shuttered the windows and left the alcove. “Listen, Robin, do you know what you did the other day?”

“Not really,” zhe admitted. “I was mostly running on instinct. I think I used my eye like one of your magic crystals or something.”

A voice came from behind zhir. “You channeled your life energy.”

Zhe turned around to see that one of the other tables here — just one — was also occupied. Zhe remembered the names of its occupants: Leaf Man, the leaf man; Ancient Narcoleptic Magus of Life-Giving, the really hairy guy; and Barb, the accountant. It was Life-Giving Magus who had spoken just now, gripping the back of his chair with paisley oven mitts.

“Is that what I did? I kinda remember lightning being involved.”

“Lightning is energy, but not power. To turn it into a form that could seal away a beast, you had to catalyze it using the life force that burned inside of you, even inside your lost eye. That takes skill.”

Robin shook zhir head. “I don’t got skill.”

“Then you’ve got a gift,” suggested Leaf Man. The others looked at him in mild surprise, as if they too occasionally forgot he was capable of speech.

“Is this that opportunity to grow my magic that you were talking about that night?” Robin asked, stretching zhir neck around the table so zhe could look at Beau and the people behind zhir simultaneously. “Is this going where I think it’s going?”

“It is,” answered Beau, “as long as you think it’s going to an offer to join the Crabapple Crew, and not, like, a free pizza or something.”

“At least a free pizza I could accept without hesitation. This is a lot to spring on a guy.”

“Why don’t you ask your invisible friend?” Barb asked without looking up from a notebook in her lap. She  _ did _ look up when her comment was met with awkward silence. “Hold on, were we pretending we couldn’t see her? Is this a politeness thing?”

“You can see her‽” exclaimed Robin. Zhe glanced upward at where zhir invisible friend, Charlie, was hovering in the middle of the room, hoping for some explanation. The astral-projected pup just shrugged, a befuddled grimace on her incorporeal face.

“Yes, we can see her; we’ve all got wizard eyes,” said Life-Giving Magus, pointing at his eyes as if in clarification. “And apparently you do, too. Quite literally, if I’m understanding things right.”

“Eye, singular,” Barb corrected. “Don’t double-count your assets. I swear, most people figure out how to bend one element of spacetime and all numerical sense vanishes from their heads.”

“And of course,” said Beau, “my offer of membership extends to her as well. What do you say?”

“What do I say?” Robin whispered to Charlie. “You’re my teacher. Is this a good idea?”

Charlie paused to consider this. “Well, I won’t be joining them. I don’t do much business in Wizard City, and besides, if I’m allowing myself some pride, they — wait, can they hear me?” Robin repeated the question and got head shakes in response, so Charlie continued. “If I can be proud for a minute, most of these folk aren’t practicing magic at a high enough level to interest me intellectually. You, though… I don’t want to make your decision for you. You might benefit from being part of a magical community. I honestly have no idea, since I never had one of those.”

_ Great, my plan to pawn the decision off on someone else backfired. _ Robin didn’t really know what to do with this. Zhe didn’t tend to get along with people, and Beau in particular had an abrasive side that would rub up against Robin’s own caustic tendencies like flint and more flint. That said, Macy had once told zhir that zhe needed to expand zhir circle of friends. Robin would do anything for that nut, even socialize.

“I’ll do it,” zhe declared. “I’ll accept your offer to join. Assuming it’s not too hard.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Beau reassured zhir. “Abracadaniel’s a member.”

A broad grin spread across Robin’s face. “Oh, you and I will get along  _ famously.” _

Life-Giving Magus cleared his throat. “Um, since you’re a prospective member and all that, I think we should all say a thing about ourselves to get to know each other better. I’ll go first: I once taught myself how to read lips.”

A beat.

Charlie flushed with embarrassment so hard she disappeared from the spiritual plane.

“So, is that it?” asked Robin, completely oblivious to the magus’s implication. “Is there some sort of ritual, or…”

“Well, of course!” exclaimed Life-Giving Magus, throwing his hands in the air so hard that one of his mitts came loose; he carefully nudged it back into place before continuing. “You can’t get legal recognition of secret society status without some esoteric initiation rites. What do you think this is, Sorcerer Town?”

Everybody laughed, for obvious reasons. Nobody wanted to be like Sorcerer Town. That was just common knowledge.

Barb cleared her throat. “The ceremony will be performed next Threesday, the 28th, at Butt-Shaped Rock. It will take place at sunset, but  _ please _ plan to be there before six o’clock. The machinations of unexpected timing issues have laid low more powerful spellcasters than you’ll ever live to see.”

“Butt-Shaped Rock?” Robin rubbed the back of zhir head nervously. “That’s a long ways away, and I don’t know any extradimensional shortcuts. I’d probably end up missing the debut of Macy’s school play on Slimeday.”

“That’s unfortunate. What’s she playing?”

“Oh, she’s not in it. She just wants to watch it.”

Barb fixed Robin with a level stare. “Then I’m sure you can work it out. In any case, once the ceremony’s taken care of, you’ll be covered by our insurance plan, so we’ll be able to take you eye-shopping and write off the expenses as a healthcare deduction. Frugality is next to globliness, you know.”

“Oh, believe you me, I know.” Robin retracted zhir neck so zhe was back in zhir chair, facing Beau once more. “I’ve gotta say, Beau, this offer seems like it came outta nowhere. You’ve been interested in me for a while, haven’t you?”

“I can’t help it,” e replied, leaning back in eir chair. “You’re an interesting person, Robin V. Abracadaniel heard about you from Simon, who’d heard from Jake what the whole sitch with you and Charlie was. Any wizard can see spirits, but you weren’t a wizard ‘til  _ after _ you started talkin’ to her. That’s interesting, and we collect interesting people. Then I got to know you over the course of our misadventure down in the trench, and I’ve gotta say, I like your sense of humor. You remind me of myself when I was more like how you are. I feel like we could have real chemistry.”

Zhe held up a paw. “No, thanks. I’ve already got a hate-boyfriend.”

“That’s not what I meant,” e stammered, gripping the edge of the table. “Guys, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s basically what you said though.” Behind zhir, the others made noises of agreement.

Robin smirked. These people were easy. Zhe had a feeling zhe was gonna have a fun time with the Crabapple Crew, whether they liked it or not.

* * *

Macy sat on a garden bench, listening to the sounds of the wind chimes tinkling in the mountain breeze, watching small corvids of various descriptions hop about in the trees and grasses and flowers. She sat on the left side of the bench, resting her arm on the shoulder. The right half was empty.

She heard footsteps from behind her. She didn’t need to turn around; she could recognize them instantaneously from their timbre and rhythm. Pen and Robin had just arrived, presumably coming down to find her for whatever reason. “Hey,” she said by way of acknowledgement, though she stayed focused on the birds.

“Hey, Macy,” said Pen, walking around the bench to sit next to her. “It’s a nice day, huh?”

“Cold,” she replied. It was, too; the mountain weather this time of year was characteristically cold and dry. Only a few winter-blooming flowers added color to the garden. Well, that and Robin, curled up in a pyramid under a tree.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “If you put on a sweater.”

Macy looked over at him, and indeed, he was wearing a garish brown-and-green sweater with a zigzag pattern. “With options like that, I’ll take my chances in the cold. I’ve got breathing exercises that can regulate my temperature, anyway.”

Pen sighed. “Temperature aside, it really is nice. I can see why you like coming down here so often. Me, I prefer to watch birds that are a bit bigger than the ones you find here, but that’s beside the point. I came down here to talk to you, Macy.”

“What about?”

It was Robin who answered. “Mace,” zhe said, “I know you’re feeling upset. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about it with me, since I’m bad at that sort of thing, and you don’t want to worry your dad since he’s prone to worrying. You need to talk to someone, though, so I think you should talk to your brother.”

Macy shifted uncomfortably. “There’s nothing to talk about. I had a crisis of confidence, but I pulled through.”

Pen put a hand on Macy’s shoulder; she pulled away on instinct, then grabbed the arm and draped it over her again, leaning into the embrace. “I know that’s not true, Macy,” he said. “I haven’t known you a tenth as long as Robin, but I know you’re being more sullen than usual. Something’s weighing on you. I don’t need you to talk about it in all too much candor, but you can’t dally by the rosebushes on this. There’s  _ something _ you’re holding yourself back from saying.”

Was there? Macy honestly didn’t know. Reflecting on her brother’s words, she couldn’t exactly deny to herself that she had been less actively socializing since she’d gotten back, at least at home. That said, she didn’t have any conscious idea why that might be, and thinking about the causes of her thinking was causing her head to hurt. “Maybe I’m annoyed that you guys are being so nosy,” she snapped. “Stop worrying about me. That’s the exact opposite of what I want.”

“No can do, wonder-teen,” teased Robin, wrapping zhirself around a tree like a vine. “That’s part of the ‘always gonna be by your side’ package. I rub your belly, you rub mine; you’re always worried for me, so I’ll always look out for you, like it or not.”

“Hmph.” Macy crossed her arms and pulled away from Pen. “And yet. You’re still going to a secret thing you can’t tell me about and missing the play for it.”

“See? I told you,” said Pen. “You oughta go. That takes priority.”

“Wha—?” Fuming, Robin uncurled from the tree and undulated over to the bench to stare down Pen with zhir singular ruby peeper. “Hey, this isn’t what we talked about. You’re supposed to be on my side for once, dude!”

Pen shrugged. “I’m your kismesis. I don’t think I’m  _ allowed _ to be on your side.”

“Besides,” Robin continued as if Pen hadn’t spoken, “you’re not even in the play, and neither are any of your friends, ever since Slick dropped out of the production to make more time for working on her one-flower show.”

“That’s not true,” said Macy. “Astrid and Jordathan are going to be the leads, remember?”

“Jordathan’s not a friend, he’s a business partner. Besides, doesn’t Astrid hate you? Like, a lot?”

Pen raised an eyebrow. “Hate? Oh, do tell.”

Macy felt her cheeks warm against the winter air. “It’s not  _ that _ kind of hate. I just sorta feel like the instant I take my eyes off those two, the four-square gang war is gonna start back up all over again. Besides, I like the play itself. Did you know that it was written by a macadamia nut?”

“I did not,” said Robin. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, please come with me to the play.”

“Won’t do. I’m an uncultured philistine whose presence would disgrace any theater.”

“Actually, you’re right, I don’t know why I invited you.”

“I’ll go to the play,” suggested Pen. “I’ll have to bring Penny along, though, since dear Colla is out of town on a birdological expedition. She’s more into poetry than stagecraft, but she’ll gladly brave it to hang out with her favorite aunt.”

Macy gripped the arm of the bench more tightly. “Well, it’s too bad Archie isn’t here, then, if Penny’s so into green-knights.”

A beat.

“Macy,” said Robin, “I think he meant that  _ you’re _ her favorite aunt.”

“Oh.” She chuckled despite herself, leaning back into Pen. “I pulled a Robin there, didn’t I?”

“You sure did,” Pen agreed. The three of them shared a hearty 21st-century-sitcom chuckle. Robin wasn’t sure why they were laughing, and Macy wasn’t sure why she’d been so tense just moments prior, but for one warm moment, that didn’t matter.

* * *

Robin, Donut Witch, and Denise the water nymph walked through the illusory wall that led into Wizard City, the crimson sunset tinting the yellow sands orange. Robin’s full seven-meter length was bent and corkscrewed in bizarre and esoteric shapes, to the extent that zhe made the 180° bend on Bagel Witch’s spine look positively ergonomic. Denise was pretty normal.

“Holy glob,” said Robin, “that ceremony was wild. I don’t know what I was expecting it to be, but it wasn’t that.”

“Initiation really is quite the adventure,” agreed Donut Witch. “After I went through it, I couldn’t walk for a week! Of course, that’s mostly because I’m so old.”

“And I respect that about you. How about you, Denise? What was your initiation like?”

“Actually, I was one of the founding members.” The evening wind funneling through the passageway blew a watery strand of hair into her mouth, so she slurped it up. “Bleh. I have no idea why I did that.”

“Ah!” Robin flicked zhir button-braided tail at Denise. “I knew you had to be a little weird. You’re one of us, now.”

“No,  _ you’re _ one of  _ us _ now.”

“And I couldn’t be happier for it. Thanks for letting me crash at your place overnight, by the way. Barb wants to go eye-shopping in the morning, and I’m leaving after that, so I’ll be out of your drink before you know it. It’s the ideal amount of time to spend with me in the morning, or so I’m told.”

“Not my place,” she corrected. “It’s a college friend’s, who’s not using it while she’s trapped in limbo. I’m just crashing there while me and the girls look for a temporary apartment. Our main digs got a bit of an infestation, so we’re relocating while it’s being fumigated.”

Donut Witch tilted her head in confusion, making a horrible cracking noise. “Isn’t your main digs the grotto beneath the Great Tree?”

“So you can see why it’s so important to fumigate.”

“I guess I should have realized,” said Robin as they approached the main street and stopped to let a magic school bus drive by. “You’re not a — I mean, your  _ main thing _ isn’t being all magical,” zhe backtracked, “so you wouldn’t live in Wizard City.”

“No need to be coy. I’m allowed in Wizard City on the grounds that I’m a summoned creature.”

“But you weren’t—”

“Tut!” She held up a finger. “You can’t prove that.”

The bus gone, Donut Witch began to cross the street. Robin started to follow, but Denise grabbed zhir shoulder. “We’re not going that way. Her hut’s on the other side of the city from my place.”

“Ah, okay.” The two began walking along the side of the road. “Do all the others live in town, then? Besides Simon and your nymph buddies, that is.”

“They all have places they rent here. Well, all except Leaf Man. He says city life is too hectic for him.” She pointed a thumb in the direction of the entrance to the city. “There’s an oasis about half a kilometer that way. He says the bushes there are heavenly. I haven’t tried it, since the bushes are thorny. Also, there are beetles.”

“What about Little Dude?”

“Oh, Finn’s old hat? They sleep where they want, and to date nobody’s been brave enough to tell them otherwise. There was this one time at a full-contact poker tournament, where…”

The two continued walking and talking. The city had been hectic and colorful when Robin had first visited — and first met the Crabapple Crew — but now, when it was going to bed, it was more vibrant than ever. Strangely, Robin found this helped zhir focus on conversation with Denise. She was so normal, so quotidian, that she formed a fixed point in all the chaos, such that the arcane cacophony served only to highlight her.

Well, not only. It also served to mask the sound and scent of an invisible stalker. This figure stood underneath a lamppost as the two walked past, holding a hooded lantern. When Robin and Denise were well out of line of sight, the figure uncovered the lantern and became visible — a lanky, white-haired, grey-skinned humanoid, wearing a “Rocker Mortis” band t-shirt over black robes.

“An oasis, huh?” Ash remarked to nobody in particular, because if he couldn’t pontificate he didn’t feel like he existed. “Very interesting. I’ll have to pay this Leaf Man a visit.”

* * *

“I’ll have to pay this Dr. Upe a visit,” said the Duchess to the Duke.

“Now, dear, be sensible.” The Duke of Nuts was fighting an uphill battle, and he knew it. When his wife got an idea in her head, it would take the mightiest pliers in Ooo to yank it out, and she’d had this one buzzing around her bonnet for decades. Not that he couldn’t relate to being a slave to one’s own mind, were one to bring up the topic of pudding. In fact, that was how they’d met.

“I am being sensible. I’m perfectly sensible. Why can’t you sense that?” As if to accentuate the point, she leaned back in the wooden throne she was seated in, flipping a bowl of nuts from on the arm over onto the floor. It wasn’t even really a throne, since this wasn’t a proper kingdom — just a replica of the Nut Kingdom’s throne, made centuries ago when this castle served as a satellite capital of theirs. It wasn’t even comfortable. The Duchess just liked the  _ idea _ of a throne.

The Duke wanted to say, “Because you’re not thinking about what’s best for our daughter.” He really did. He just wasn’t quite there yet, in his ongoing journey to becoming a more assertive, maybe slightly meaner person. Instead, he did what any good politician would do when faced with a difficult question: He deflected. “Well, have you asked Macy about it?”

“Bah! That’s the whole problem, remember? Dr. Upe’s got her on those happy pills for the last two weeks, ever since she got back from that ocean vacation. She couldn’t complain if she wanted to.”

He sighed. “They’re not happy pills, she only started taking them a week ago, and that wasn’t a vacation.”

“Semantics.” She waved her hand, then made a loopy symbol next to her head. “They mess with her head, and I don’t trust that. It could make her normal, and then she wouldn’t fit in with the rest of us.”

“I — hm. That  _ is _ a concern, isn’t it?” The Duke pondered this for a moment. “I still think you shouldn’t go see them in person. There’s still unrest about the Icy U situation; the last thing my public image needs right now is for people to think members of my own family are threatening medical professionals into not doing their jobs.”

“Not think,” corrected the Duchess.  _ “Know. _ That is what I’d be doing, after all.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds like an even worse idea than it is already. If you need to do something, just talk to her.”

“You talk to her. She’s your daughter.”

“She’s yours, too!”

“Not biologically.”

The comment was so unexpected it stopped the Duke’s train of thought in its tracks. What sort of nonsense was this conversation derailing into? “She’s not mine, either. She’s adopted. Do you not remember this?”

“Huh? You’re sure she wasn’t a product of a torrid affair you had with a maid, which you kept secret by burning the letters, except then our daughter found out about it from the fire elemental who stoked the flames?”

Oh. That sort of nonsense. “That didn’t happen, dear. That was a plotline from one of your telenovelas. Besides, we’ve never even had a maid, or a fire elemental. We’ve just got Lisby.”

“Really? So you don’t have an evil twin who was separated at birth?”

“Sadly, no, though it would make a convenient cover story for all the pudding people see me… acquire.”

The Duchess let out a scratchy chuckle at that. “Just promise you won’t accidentally reveal during our next wedding anniversary that you only married me because  _ my _ more attractive, evil twin was unavailable, okay?”

The Duke leaned forward and kissed his wife on the lips, an action for which sentient nut biology was not optimized, but he still managed to make tender. “You  _ are _ the evil twin, dear.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Now, please don’t threaten any doctors.”

“You’re holding me back, man!”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during those rare moments when the mildly dysfunctional monarchs of Jugland actually interacted with each other in a romantic capacity. The rarer the fruit, the sweeter the taste. Of course, I don’t need to become a fly in order to witness these events. Neither did Macy, but for a different reason: She already was one. She had watched the whole conversation through its compound eyes, heard through its antenna. She rather wished she hadn’t, since then she wouldn’t have witnessed her parents snog immediately afterwards, but it was too late for that now. She broke the connection.

She was back in her bed now, under the covers. Her headache had dulled down to a quiet thrumming, and she could only somewhat smell blackened catfish and cilantro butter. More importantly, she’d determined that her parents probably weren’t going to be free any time soon, so she’d need Pen to help her out.

This wasn’t how she’d wanted to spend her Vigilday. She was gonna take a nice long walk, get some exercise in, maybe break in the new sword. She supposed she’d still get the chance to do that, just not quite in the way she hoped. Asking Sprightly along was probably out of the question, though.

She closed her eyes to focus on the message emblazoned in her brain once more, a prismgram from Robin. She didn’t even know she could receive prismgrams, but she supposed desperate times called for desperate measures.

_ Come to Wizard City. I got my new eye, and I think you’ll like what I settled on. I’m almost glad I lost the old one. Oh, also, please hurry, we think something happened to Leaf Man. _

* * *

Twenty-four hours earlier…

Denise stood in the doorway of her rented apartment, seeing off her new sorta-colleague. Her mottled sleeping gown tugged at her hair as she waved, the fabric prickled overnight by her natural humidity. She could already feel the cool, dry air of the Wizard City morning coaxing the sleeves of her robe to stick like that, so she hung well inside. “You’re sure you want to head out now?” she asked. “If you stick around, I’ll make breakfast. I make a killer instant oatmeal.”

Robin, who had manifested a fine suit apparently out of thin air to get dressed for today’s events, raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t the cooking directions for that, ‘just add water?’”

With a smirk Denise flicked her fingers, and a tiny raincloud appeared above them for just a second. “Exactly. It’s kinda my specialty. I mean, I  _ am _ a plumber by trade.”

“Neat. I did not know that about you, considering I’ve only just met you.”

“Do you know what  _ I _ am?” asked the human woman standing next to zhir, tapping her foot. Barbara’s suit had not been summarily summoned; on the contrary, she carried herself as if she had been born with the garments fully intact, and merely grown into them later. If Denise was so normal that she stood out in this city of fools, then Barb was  _ so _ -so normal that it was ridiculous, looping back around until she fit right in. Even the ruffles where her dress shirt bunched up against her cuffs were perfectly coiffed.

“Sure I do,” answered Robin. “You’re an, uh… accountant, right.”

“No, I’m — yes, actually,” she said, sounding taken aback by the idea that this uncouth, irreverent mutt could remember anyone else’s personal details at all. “But what I was going to say is that I’m impatient. You’ve already made me wait for thirty-five minutes after our agreed-upon time. Get your goodbyes out; we’re going eye shopping.”

“Eye-eye, captain.” Robin put zhir paw over zhir forehead in a mock salute. Barb groaned. Denise stifled a giggle.

“Well, if you need anything,” said Denise, “don’t forget to call. You’ve got my number, right?”

Robin reached into zhir mouth and pulled out a pink crystal. “I don’t have anyone’s number, actually. I only use  _ peulijeonbo.” _

“Prismgram? Yeah, I can get those, too. Just don’t expect a reply, and don’t message me twice in a row, because subsequent messages  _ will _ be ignored.”

“Got it. I don’t foresee my possibly ever needing to put that information to use, but even so, you have my—”

“Robin!” called Barb, already several meters away and accelerating. “Are you coming or not?”

“Sure thing! Bye, Denise.” Zhe conjured an illusory hat, tipped it, and then was gone.

Denise replied with a “Bye!” of her own, waited a second, and then closed the door. She turned around, putting her back up against it, and sank down to the floor. The inside of the apartment was a mess, with chairs knocked over, pillows strewn about, and the kitchen sink turned on and running. How Robin could have made this much of a mess just getting ready to leave, she had no idea. Whatever the explanation, she was definitely going on the ‘do not invite inside’ list, right between old-style vampires and doomsday evangelists.

She let out a sigh. She had better start cleaning this up.

* * *

Pen’s car pulled to a stop outside Wizard City for the second time in as many months (it hadn’t actually been a full four weeks, but the month had rolled over to Lyam while nobody was looking). In less time than it takes for me to finish — oops, Macy already leapt out of the passenger side door. She waved goodbye to Pen as she ran toward the cliff face, not realizing that she doesn’t have a means to ingress.

Whatever, that didn’t matter. She had a place to be, and she needed to be there fast. She knew where the illusory wall was; it was only a matter of running forward at just the right spot, and she’d be in Wizard City with no need for a secret passcode or anything. She charged forward, full speed.

_ Plonk! _ She smacked into the wall and fell backwards. There was a crack of breaking bone-like material as Shark’s Tooth, strapped to her back, snapped in half when she landed. She gazed up at the two suns dancing around each other in the late morning sky. Apparently, that was not how the entrance to Wizard City worked.

She barely had enough time to process that thought before the wall in front of her disappeared and three figures walked up, gazing down at her. One of them, some sort of hippie with a wand that looked like a stick he’d just found somewhere, turned to whisper to one of the others, a lemonade machine with a crude crayon drawing of a face taped onto its center of mass. “Do you think she’s dead?”

“Negative,” replied the lemonade machine in a synthesized, autotuned voice. “That would be stupid. She is merely… calculating probabilities… calculating proba— resting.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing,” agreed Macy, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “Hey, so I’m in a bit of a hurry; would you guys happen to be the, uh, Tangerine Team? I think?”

“Crabapple Crew,” said the third figure, a water nymph in a dress shirt and booty shorts, “but close enough.” She extended a hand to Macy, who took it, and pulled her to her feet. “I’m Chonda, and these are my crewmates, Abracadaniel and Lemonade 2.”

Macy looked at the others — one, a tall, slender, pink-skinned nerd with a green tracksuit and rainbow wrist warmers; the other, some sort of sentient vending machine with the word “Lemonade” emblazoned on the front in bold, hip-hop lettering. “Which one’s which?”

“It doesn’t really matter. All men look the same to me.”

“I am not a man,” said Lemonade 2 (the robot, just to clarify). “I am a superior—”

“Leaf Man is missing,” Macy blurted out.

Abracadaniel grew apprehensive. “Let’s not talk openly,” he insisted, stepping away along the cliff face and gesturing for the others to follow.

“Why can’t we?”

“I’d rather not talk openly about it.”

Macy crossed her arms and stood her ground, even as the others all began following. “Well, you’re not leading me to a secondary location. I came here because Robin asked me to. Where’s Robin?”

Abracadaniel grimaced, then waved his wand in the air, creating an off-color, pastel rainbow. “I’ll tell you later,” he said with a wink, as the rainbow turned into mist and spiraled off into the distance.

“No, tell me now.”

Chonda doubled back to lean over and whisper into where she assumed Macy’s ear slit was (she was wrong, but close enough). “He just did.”

“What are you — oh.” She began to follow the others.

Once they were fifty or so meters away from the entrance (and Pen’s car), Abracadaniel waved his wand again, and a weak trickle of fog tricked out and gathered around the group’s feet, obscuring their toes from sight. He shook his wand angrily, and the fog raised a bit, then slumped back down. He tried one more time, but this time Chonda raised her arms at the same time, and the fog leapt up to cover them wholly in a faint haze.

“First try,” said Abracadniel, blowing a bit of fog off his wand before stowing it in his belt. “Lemons, mask our sound, will you?”

“Affirmative.” It pressed a button on its side, and instead of dispensing a can of cool, freshly-dropped lemonade, it began shuddering, whirring and popping to the tune of an experimental mathpop song.

Chonda glanced around to ensure nobody was paying attention to this incredibly inconspicuous scene — if anyone were planning on eavesdropping, they’d do it now, after all. “Anyway,” she said, “here’s the situation. Robin had picked out zhir eye last night, but zhe didn’t want to put it in alone in case something went wrong. Zhe called the rest of the gang together, and most of us showed, but Leaf Man didn’t, which was weird because he lives right outside of town and honestly there’s no chance he had something better to do. We thought nothing of it, but this morning, as Denise was headed past his bush on her way to recharge at the oasis, she saw signs of a struggle, and concluded he’d been kidnapped.”

“This is not surprising,” added Lemonade 2. “He is weak and pathetic, like a tiny organic baby man. It is entirely possible the culprit was some sort of fluffy bunny, or a particularly dedicated duck.”

Macy shuddered. “I hope it’s not a duck. I’ve read some scary things about them.”

“I’m already worried enough as it is,” said Abracadaniel, shuddering. “Robin and Life-Giving Magus are investigating the scene, with Little Dude tagging along as, uh, muscle. But this isn’t the only disappearance that’s happened recently, so Alice and Donut Witch are working that angle. Barb is on overwatching, keeping us connected, but other than hearing that Robin reached out to you, there haven’t been any meaningful updates on that front.”

“Cool. I have no idea who any of those people are.” A beat. “Except for Robin, obviously. I noticed you didn’t mention Beau, though.”

Abracadaniel tapped his fingers together. “He didn’t respond to my text. I think he turned off his phone after I group-texted him fifty pics of the same tiramisu. He and Denise are off doing other things for now.”

“Don’t know who that is either, but good to know. Do I actually need to know  _ any _ of this?”

“If you wanna help out, then yes,” said Chonda. “We could use all the help we can get, you know. A friend of ours is missing. Don’t you want to be a hero and save them?”

Macy nodded enthusiastically. Her entire demeanor changed, in fact. Gone was the hesitation, the skeptical slouch. She was all eagerness and energy now. She even stood a bit taller. “Hero mode engaged. Where do you need me?”

Chonda grinned, then tapped her forehead. “It’s not a where, it’s a what. You’ve got some sort of telepathy, right? Why don’t you cast a net, see if any animals know anything?”

Macy nodded. Chonda snapped; the mist dispersed; Lemonade 2 stopped making weird noises. The nut sat bow-legged, raising her arms and closing her eyes, and began humming in harmony with the desert wind whistling through the invisible canyon. She glowed.

“Wow,” said Abracadaniel. “How did you know what to say to her?”

“Please, Danny, I’m a lawyer. I know how to read people.” She closed her eyes in self-satisfaction, pushing back the memory imprint of the prismgram she’d gotten from Robin telling her to “tell Macy something about heroism and junk”. “That’s the only reason,” she insisted.

* * *

“What about this?” asked Robin, holding up a pulsating sphere of swirling black energies that radiated an aura of malevolence so hateful that it began leeching the color from zhir stripes.

Barb frowned. “If what I give you results in your soul being devoured from the inside out, I’m pretty sure we’ll lose our non-irresponsibility tax rebate.”

“Fine.” Zhe put it back on the shelf, amongst a collection of various other eyes and eye equivalents. Robin wasn’t sure how there could possibly be enough demand for a magic shop to have an entire wing devoted to replacements and enhancers for various sensory organs, but this was the third one zhe and Barb had been to, with the same result each time. “I can’t believe you won’t cover any of the ones I pick out.”

“And  _ I _ can’t believe you won’t pick out any of the ones I can cover,” replied Barb. “Just go with something simple and functional.”

“It wouldn’t be right. My new peeper needs to bring at least as much to the table as this mystique-inducing eyepatch, if not more. Otherwise there’s no point.”

“The point is being able to have depth perception.”

Robin shrugged. “I ain’t never did have not so good depth perception to begin with.”

“And look where that got you.”

“I can’t, on account of I ain’t got no depth perception.”

“See, that’s what those in the insurance industry would call a pre-existing condition. Along with recklessness, codependency, and willingness to let a stranger lead you to a secondary location.”

Robin scoffed. “I know about stranger danger. I’d never do something like that. Now, are we done here, or should we move on to the next store, person whose name I don’t remember?”

Barb pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing up her pince-nez glasses. “Frankly, I’m not sure if I should bother at this point. You’re being incredibly picky about your replacement eye, to the degree that I’m not sure you’re treating this with the severity it deserves. It’s like you’re magnetically attracted to bad choices, which to be fair is probably true of half the residents of this city. Your priorities are so skewed and opaque that I have no idea how to shop for you, and you’ve managed to continually beat the odds by not selecting a single option I can actually  _ cover.” _

“Just ask.”

“What?” Barb looked up sharply at the rainicorn-dog, who had extended to zhir full length and was now hovering serenely over her in an ouroboros spiral. “Ask about coverage? I’ve crunched numbers whose names you could not begin to fathom in your most horrifying nightmares. I know what we can cover.”

“No, I mean just ask about my priorities. Then you can skip the part that seems to be frustrating you and get right to sticking a magic doohicky into my eyehole to make me see good. A while back, a good friend taught me that communication is an important part of any relationship, be that platonic, revenge-based, or co-conspirator.”

Barb crossed her arms and glared at Robin. “Then why didn’t you just  _ say _ your preferences?”

“Um.” A beat. Robin descended and shrunk back into zhir indoor form. “You never asked.”

“I did. You said, and I quote: ‘I dunno, why don’t we just go window shopping and I’ll figure it out?’ Don’t try to play word games if you can’t remember your own words.”

Robin rolled zhir singular eye. “Okay, whatever. I’ll answer your stupid question.”

“Fine. What are you looking for in an eye?”

“Dunno. Can’t look for it without both eyes.”

“Augh!” Barb sank onto her knees, pulling frantically at her tied-back hair. She could tell this was going to be a long day.

* * *

Chonda poked her head out of the shadowy crevice. “Hey, Macy,” she asked. “Could you tell me again how you found this place? I want my text to Barb to be as clear as possible.”

“Sure.” Macy was standing awkwardly several meters away from the cliff face in which the crevice was embedded, glancing side to side as she tried not to look like she was on sentry duty. “A juvenile desert eagle was scouting out the area for prey yesterday, when it spotted some suspicious figures wandering into this crevice. It thought they might have been picnickers, so it camped out nearby hoping small scavengers would show up, but none did. When the figures left, one of them headed in the direction of the oasis, while the other went toward an abandoned gas station down the road.”

“I’ll just say a little bird told you.”

“Sure. How goes the search?” she called back.

Abracadaniel stepped out, typing on a cell phone. “I’ve texted a picture to Robin,” he said. “We’ll see if zhe can smell anything.”

She wheeled around. “Alright, tightpants, I’m no expert, but I’m fairly certain that’s not how this works. There’s no way Robin will be able to—”

_ Ding! _ “Oh, hey, I got a text back. Zhe says that one of the smells matches someone who’s passed by the oasis, and zhe’s tracking it now.”

“Well, that shows me for assuming.” She sighed. “I guess Robin really is full of surprises.”

Abracadniel narrowed his eyes. “Hold on, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s what supposed to mean?”

“Never mind, then. I’ll take point, if you want to go in and look around.“

“Sure.” She walked past Abracadaniel, high-fiving him as she passed, and entered the crevice. It was a very narrow, very shadowy crack in the canyon wall, much like any other; worn-walled and narrow-roofed, it sat like an eye unblinking unto the desert. Today, it was not observing, but being observed. Inside, Lemonade 2 stood in the center, glowing bright and examining the entire room meticulously with its robot vision, while Chonda scoured every bit of its walls meticulously with no special power in particular. The whole scene rather reminded Macy of research students examining a fruitless corner of the Jugland mines.

Macy got to work right away. She tried visualizing what something like this might normally look like. There were no signs that animals were using it as a burrow (and the eagle hadn’t mentioned any), but there were some hardy grasses making their home in the shade of its opening. She heard its rustling and echoed it with her breathing, the frication of its leaves becoming a rasp in her throat. Now, though, the desert did not answer. Did whatever fox or vole lived here have some personal dislike for Macy? Or was it too scared to talk, fearing retribution from whoever had been hiding out there? There were only zero ways to find out, because yeah that was about the limit of what she could think to do.

There was no getting around it. She was distracted by something, and whatever it was wasn’t doing her the courtesy of making itself known. Not that it would have mattered either way — there wasn’t much here. Just with her eyes, she could tell that not much in the crevice was disturbed, beyond mere footprints. Even the parched-yellow grasses hadn’t been trampled over. Whoever had been using this nook hadn’t used it for much.

Still, it was their only lead other than what Robin was apparently following up on, so she joined up with Chonda to begin just manually looking at stuff and stuff. “Yes,” she concluded after half an hour of searching, “these walls are definitely made of stone.”

Suddenly, Abracadaniel poked his head in. “Pardon me for interrupting, but—”

“Great!” Macy shouted, louder than she intended. Chonda recoiled from the loud noise, and Lemonade 2 whirred judgmentally. Macy winced. “Sorry. Continue the interruption as if I never spoke up.”

“—Robin texted again. Zhe’s tracked the trail to an abandoned building, but zhe can’t tell if it’s coming or going, since it ends there. Macy, zhe was sort of hoping you would have some advice; zhe seems to be under the impression you’re some kind of expert tracker.”

Macy tapped her foot bashfully. “Well, I wouldn’t say  _ expert… _ Hm, if we’ve got two trails leading to that station, it may be more than just a passing destination. Robin’s pretty literal, so I bet I know why zhe’s getting hung up. Tell zhir to stop looking for where the scent  _ is, _ and start looking for where scents have been  _ erased.” _

Abracadaniel blinked. “Wait, how do you know the building was a gas station?”

“A little bird told me.” Zhe winked at Chonda. Chonda winked back. Abracadaniel shrugged and left to send the text. Lemonade 2 had no reaction. Classic Lemonade 2, right there.

A beat.

“Hey,” said Macy, “wanna give up on finding clues here and just go to help out Robin instead?”

“Affirmative, my organic acquaintance.”

* * *

It’s four o’clock,” said Robin, pulling out a chair toward the edge of the rooftop patio.

“I’m well aware,” said Barb, sitting in the chair next to zhir and sipping a cocktail, her jacket hung over the back of the chair like a cape. “Is there a reason you’re announcing the time?”

“Nope.” Zhe did not elaborate. Instead, zhe unfolded a menu sitting on a table between them and held it up below zhir face like a tanning mirror. “I assume you finally gave up on picking out an eye for me.”

“On the contrary; I’ve finally devised a tactic that will help me get to the bottom of this. But first, Robin, I think I need to get to know you a bit better.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Robin launched into a spiel about zhir sob story. Zhe talked for hours about how all the nerds picked on zhir at school, how zhe got kicked from the sportsball team three times, how when zhe was seven zhe permanently lost the ability to taste feta cheese. When the waiter asked for zhir order, zhe took that as an excuse to go on a tangent concerning zhir quest to create the perfect spinach casserole, explaining how zhe had toiled for hours cleaning dishes in the finest kitchens of Ooo in order to learn their culinary secrets, only to be kicked out each time for licking them (zhe ended up ordering spaghetti). When a throuple asked zhir to take their picture at the edge of the balcony, zhe lamented about how zhir lack of passive color vision had led zhir to wear a mismatched outfit when zhe got zhir driver’s license taken, and was now too embarrassed about it to ever drive again (zhe took the photo, but it was out of focus). When Barb accused zhir of making all of this up, zhe went on a tirade about how people never took zhir seriously just because zhe never took anything seriously (but yes, zhe admitted, zhe had made most of this up).

“Which parts are real?” asked Barb, before slurping down the last tentacle of her non-Euclidean sk’wdde soup.

Robin sprouted an extra pair of arms from zhir jowls, which shrugged. “I’ve sorta lost track. “I think all the parts with my mom are true, though.”

“You didn’t mention your mother at all.”

“Eh.” Zhe sipped a glass of root beer that had been empty for half an hour. “She never really gave me anything, anyway. ‘Cept my eyes.”

Barb snapped her fingers. “Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Robin recoiled. “Are you going to ask me how that makes me feel? Psychoanalyze my relationship with my mother? Because I’m not okay with that.”

“What? No. What? Definitely not. I’m not.” She looked down at zhir shirt, where a bit of eldritch broth had tripped onto the front; with a wave of her fingers, the spot came off, whereupon Robin lunged forward and ate it out of the air. “I just want to — that’s gross.”

“Sorry,” Robin lied.

“I just want to figure out what you want from your eye, so we can get this whole process over with. If your feelings about your eyes are tied to your feelings about your mother, then so be it.”

“They’re not.” Robin’s face melted into a grumpy expression. “Or at least, I don’t want them to be. She’s not a part of my life, and hasn’t been for a long time. But her expectations for me, and her disappointment about it, seriously messed me up, and I’m done pretending that’s not an unfortunate part of who I am today. My eyes were a big part of that. And now…” Zhe sighed. “Now, I’ve done what she always wanted. I performed an incredible act of magic using my eyes. So it’s harder than ever not to associate these rubies with… her.”

“I see, I see.” Barb was definitely psychoanalyzing Robin’s relationship with zhir mother. “So you’ve been picking the absolute worst, most glob-awful, impractical and self-destructive eye options because that’s the opposite of what she would want, and thus weakens the unwanted symbolic association?”

“Nah, I just picked them because they’re cool.”

“Okay, you can shut up now. I think I know what to do. What if we…” She produced a small sketchpad from seemingly nowhere, flipped to a blank page, and began scribbling in it with a multicolor pen of similarly arcane origin. After a minute, she held it up to Robin. “How’s this look?”

“Like a snake,” zhe replied. “Is that what my new eye is gonna look like?”

“No, that’s you.  _ That _ —” zhe tapped a colored speck — “is your eye. Pretend it’s where your eye is supposed to be; I’m not an artist.”

Robin squinted, periscoping zhir eye up close and personal with the paper. “Wait, is that what I think it is?”

“Probably,” guessed Barb. “Is that okay?”

Zhe grinned. “I love it.”

“Excellent.” A beat. “Now, tell me what you think it is, just so we’re clear.”

* * *

Leaf Man awoke in darkness. He was sitting on a stone bench of some kind, rough and slightly damp. He reached out and felt an electric force repel his hand; he recoiled, yelping quietly. He was either in some kind of magical prison cell or trapped inside a deactivated computer (both of which had happened to him before). He sniffed at the air, but he didn’t smell anything because plants don’t have senses of smell; that would just be ridiculous. I mean, come on.

“Pst. Hey.” He couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. His eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, but beyond the faint orange shimmer of the borders of his magical cell, he couldn’t make anything out. Wherever he was, it was too echoey to locate the origin of the sound aurally, either.

“Hey,” the voice repeated. “Leaf Man? That you?”

Leaf Man cautiously nodded in the direction he thought the sound was coming from.

“You got got too, huh? Good grod, guy. Smerlin and that cat lady were in here, too, but the guy who nabbed us released them after he got whatever it was he wanted. Not sure why they haven’t brought down the full fury of Grand Master Wizard on this place yet, but if we can get out, we won’t even need that, if you know what I mean. Eh?”

Leaf Man simply stood there.

“You don’t know what I mean? Come on, think about it, what do we have in common?”

He kept standing there.

“Oh. You don’t recognize me, huh? It’s no surprise; I probably look a mess. Come on, it’s me, Narl.”

He stood some more.

“Wait, do you not remember me? You helped me out that one time with that thing, and that other time,  _ I _ helped  _ you _ with  _ that _ thing.”

And some more.

“Narl? Narl Bufossen? Used to be part of Bufo? Though I don’t know if you’d ever met Bufo; Simon did, though. Heh, I tried to kill him once. Then again, lots of people’d tried to kill the Ice King.”

Just standin’ around.

“Ah, playing the silent game, huh? Well, I’ll have you know, I’m the absolute champion of that as well as all other games. Why, this one time I—”

“Shut up!” A door opened, shedding some much-needed light into the room. It was an unfinished cement basement, with several ritual circles of trapping drawn on the ground with stools thoughtfully placed inside them. Only two of the circles were active: Leaf Man’s, and one next to him where a frog was currently standing (oh, yeah, now Leaf Man remembered them, vaguely). At the top of the stairs, leaning on an iron railing that was probably going to give him tetanus, was that jerk Ash. “I swear, frog, if I’d known you were going to be this annoying I wouldn’t have kidnapped you. All this jabbering is hardly worth what I’m gonna get from you.”

“Oh, sorry about that, man,” said Narl. “I’ll shut up now.”

Leaf Man just continued to stand there some more, out of habit. He had no idea what was going on, but this all seemed fine, really. It wasn’t like he had plans.

Ash walked into the center of the room, rubbing his hands together creepily. “Alright, then, it looks like our newest guest is finally awake. Let’s see if we can’t learn anything from you.”

Leaf Man pointed at himself.

“Yes, you. Hey, uh, you can talk, right?”

He shook his head. He could, of course, but maybe he could mess with this guy.

“What?” asked Narl. “Of course he can talk. He’s just messing with you.”

Leaf Man turned around and shot Narl a death glare. Unfortunately, the glare’s curse did not have enough magical power to get through the boundaries of the magic cell. Next time, though, for sure.

“Ah, I get what’s going on. You think this is funny, huh?” Ash knelt down to be at eye level with Leaf Man, then tried several times in vain to crack his knuckles. “Don’t bother. I’ve got ways of making you talk.

“Neat!” Leaf Man shouted, causing Ash to fall backwards in startlement, hands clutching his pained ears.

“Oh, whatever,” grumbled Ash. “I’m not here for you, right now, though you ought to pay attention; it’ll save us some time later. Narl!”

He snapped his fingers; the translucent cylinder of pure magic surrounding Narl disappeared, replaced by manacles of the same material. These lifted off the ground, suspending the frog in the air upside-down. Ash withdrew a fiery wand from his cloak, holding it up against the frog’s bulbous vocal sac.

“It’s long past time to stop these games,” Ash hissed. “You’ve done nothing but deny everything since you got here. You even denied that you were a member of the Antiquers at all, which I  _ know _ isn’t true because you’ve got their secret society patch sewn onto the outside of your stupid purple shirt.

“Nuh-uh,” insisted Narl, shifting an arm uncomfortably to cover up the secret society patch with a fold in aforementioned stupid purple shirt.

“You’re the weakest link in a strong chain. I know that your powerful buddies have given you some powerful magic artifacts to compensate for it, and I know you’re keeping them in the basement of your apartment on Neverwhere Street, so the sooner you tell me how I can get at them, the sooner we can all forget this ever happened.”

“Hah!” Narl winced as their vocal sac pressed against the wand, but they kept talking through it. “Shows what you know, idiot. My stash is hidden in the water tower’s reflection in the old pond out by the Briar Woods. Your guess wasn’t even  _ close.” _

Ash put away the wand. “See? That wasn’t so hard. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d just said that days ago.”

“What? I didn’t say anything, though.”

He chuckled. “I see you’re trying to get ahead of the game, but I really must insist on wiping your memory myself.”

“My memory of what?”

Ash stepped forward, making a circle with one hand to spin Narl rightways up; he placed the other on Narl’s forehead, before both of them closed their eyes for like two and a half hours. Leaf Man passed the time by playing tic-tac-toe with himself in the dust. It was a truly fascinating game, with an infinitude of possibilities, he found. Of course, he’d never bothered to learn the rules, so he was mostly guessing. It was possible the game was actually as simple as it appeared from the outside. He dismissed the notion; surely it wouldn’t be so popular were that the case.

There was a loud flash of light and a bitter puff of gas as the two broke contact. Ash staggered backward, head in hands, while Narl flew across the room, their aetheric shackles gone. Ash strode across the room and helped Narl to their feet; the frog had a dazed look in their eyes, like they weren’t quite sure what was going on. He led them up the stairs and shoved them out the door, whereupon they razamafoo’d away.

“So, then,” said Ash, slowly turning around to look at Leaf Man, “don’t you think it’d be better to sa—”

Then a bolt of rainbow sprinkle energy came from the open doorway and knocked Ash firmly into the floor. Robin crashed down next to him, crawling, zhir eyes alight with fury — one a familiar red, the other an identical gem in a matching blue. Life-Giving Magus next to zhir with oven mitts raised menacingly. Leaf Man gave them a thumbs-up.

“Curses!” Ash hissed. “I just wanted to get some magic items by extorting members of powerful secret magic clubs. How was I supposed to know that would trigger retaliation from powerful magic secret club, uh, forget this sentence.” He reached into his cloak with both hands, pulling out a rubik’s cube and a flyswatter. “Let’s just go or whatever.”

Robin sent another blast toward Ash, but he deflected it into Life-Giving Magus’s hairy, hairy face with the flyswatter. He threw the rubik’s cube at zhir, and on contact it expanded into an enormous, translucent cob enclosing zhir. Zhe tried to stretch a fist toward him, but all that happened was the colors shifted around the outside.

Ash swiped the flyswatter at the reeling Life-Giving Magus, but the magus whipped out a hand — suddenly demittened — and grabbed the flyswatter by the top of the handle. “Aha!” he proclaimed as a blue glow enveloped the flyswatter. “You have become the architect of your doom, kidnapper!”

An angry face appeared on the flyswatter, which wrested itself free of Ash’s grip and began whapping Life-Giving Magus on the head repeatedly. “Joke’s on you,” it shouted, “I’m totally okay with this!”

“Oh, no, I have become the architect of my own doom! The irony itself is ironic!”

Ash was reaching into his cloak again when Robin glowed zhir horn and magically changed the colors on the rubik’s cube to being solved, causing it to explode and re-form into a cube on the ground. Zhe stretched a paw forward, punching Ash in the face, then shapeshifting it into an anvil and slamming him to the ground.

Life-Giving Magus wiggled the fingers on his free hand, recalling the blue energy that was animating the flyswatter and reverting it to a simple item, which he grabbed. “Nice going, Robin. Now, you keep him pinned there while I break this magical cage.” He walked over to Leaf Man. “Even with Little Dude distracted gorging itself on expired Softy Cheese upstairs, this has been a piece of—”

Suddenly, he tripped, falling into a narcoleptic slumber as soon as he hit the floor. The source of his trip stepped out from where they had been obscured behind one of the prison cells — a white leg, half-covered by a blue and white toga, attached to a round, squart body holding a single white sai with a blue hilt decoration.

“Say cake,” said Masse in a comically low tone of voice he genuinely thought was intimidating. “I dare you.”

“Snrrrk,” snored Life-Giving Magus.

“Close enough.”

“Seyv‽” exclaimed Robin, morphing zhir hand into a set of manacles for Ash. “Hey, dude, haven’t seen you in a while. Nice sword.”

“Nice eye,” responded Masse. “How about I carve it out?” He lunged forward, jabbing the sai right toward Robin’s face.

Zhe morphed zhir head out of the way. “Aw, but I just got this one. What gives? I don’t remember you being this evil.”

In zhir distraction, zhe’d let Ash wrest an arm free; withdrawing the fire wand, he launched a fireball at Robin, scorching zhir fur and forcing zhir to retreat, dropping him in the process. He landed on hands and knees, but quickly stood up. “That’s a pretty harsh label,  _ dude,” _ he said. “We’re just pissed that the world’s taken away what we were owed, so we’re taking it back.”

Masse glanced at Ash, then sidestepped away from him. “Not really. I mostly don’t care, is all. Frankly, I find this philosophastery pretty uncomfy.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Robin growled, “but seriously, what’s going on? Stand down, fool.” Zhe began snaking zhir hind leg around the outside corner of the room, hoping to sneak it behind Ash and kick that wand out of his hand. “Let’s talk about this like civilized sentient beings.”

Ash sent another fireball toward Robin, but zhe removed the heat from the fire so it harmlessly washed over zhir face.

“See? That was pathetic. There’s no need for hostility. We go way back. Why don’t we catch up?” Zhir paw was nearly in position. “You’ll go first.”

Masse stabbed Robin’s encroaching paw with his sai; Robin yelped in pain and tried to retract it, but it was stuck, so zhe ended up tugging zhirself into a wall, banging zhir head something fierce. “No,” Masse said coldly, “you’ll go down. Ash, go kick zhir buttocks.”

“You’re not the boss of me, kid.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh, right.” Ash brandished the wand and ran toward Robin.

Suddenly an arrow flew through the doorway, nicking his hand and making him drop the arrow. Without missing a beat, he reached down for the rubik’s cube, but a second arrow knocked it across the room. He looked up, snarling, only to receive a quick sword-butt to the back of the head.

Macy now stood in the center of the room, Nut Bow in one hand, Shark’s Tooth in the other, standing over Ash with a foot pressed down on his back and staring at Masse in confusion. “What’s — what?” All the purpose she’d had fled from her, and she merely looked on in shock.

An expression of anger spread over Masse’s face. “So, you’re here, huh?” he said, stalking forward, sai held in a defensive position. “I should have known your dog wouldn’t stray far from you. I’ll bet this whole thing was some sick joke you designed to get me in the room so you could tell me to knock it off.”

Shark’s Tooth dipped toward the ground as Macy’s grip on it slackened. “Huh? Masse? For real? Like, for real for real?”

He reached down, yanking Ash out from under Macy and throwing him over his shoulder. “Whatever, I know when I’m beaten. Save your apology. I don’t care anymore. I now know what you must have back then: that I’m not gonna get what I want unless I’m willing to take it.” He walked up the stairs, turning back to add, “Bye, Macy,” before leaving.

Macy blinked. “Hold on, was Masse a bad guy?”

She heard a groan behind her; she whirled around, quickly tucking Shark’s Tooth in a belt sheath and readying the Nut Bow, only to see Robin rubbing zhir head. “Yes, Macy,” zhe groaned, “Masse’s a bad guy. Apparently. Ow.”

Just then, Abracadaniel, Lemonade 2, and Chonda walked down into the basement. “Okay, Macy, we’re here,” Abracadaniel wheezed. “We passed by those two guys you freed on their way out. Good job.”

“Those were the bad guys,” said Robin.

“Oh. Whoops. That’s why you never split the party.”

Macy blinked again, turned to Leaf Man’s prison cell, and placed her hand just over it. She began to humm a high-pitched, noisy melody, then drew Shark’s Tooth and swung. The cell shattered. “Are you the only one?” she asked.

Leaf Man nodded. “Remaining,” he added to clarify. “Rest are fine. No memory, though.”

“Good. That means I can finally do this.” Macy stowed her weapons, ran over to Robin, and hugged zhir.

“Oof!” Robin winced, then hugged back. “Not to complain, but what’s this for? I’m not the one who was kidnapped.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Macy. “I’m so, so, sorry. I was mean and unsupportive, and I should have been happy for you to have all these friends, but I figured it out — I was jealous. What Masse said made it click. I’ve been so used to being the center of your universe, that once you started to drift away, I was worried we wouldn’t come back together. You’re part of a world that I can’t be in, now, and I promise from now on that I’ll try my very hardest to be okay with that.”

“I dunno about that,” Chonda interrupted, walking up to the two as Abracadaniel hugged Leaf Man in the background (and Lemonade 2 offered him some lemonade). “You helped to save one of us. That makes you as good  _ as _ one of us. I’m sure the others would have no problem extending honorary membership.”

Macy wiped away a tear she didn’t remember crying. “No, that’s okay. This can be Robin’s world. I’m sure zhe wouldn’t want me embarrassing zhir by telling stories about—” She was cut off by a tail braided full of buttons somehow finding its way into her mouth.

Chonda chuckled, then took out a phone that Robin recognized as Abracadaniel’s. “Anyway, I’d better let the others know this case has been closed. They’ll be relieved, plus Alice can get back to her job as a wavy arm mascot at a used car dealership.”

Robin’s jaw literally dropped to the floor, painfully. “Two things,” zhe said, after zhe manually popped it back into place.  _ “Ow, _ and I don’t think I’ve ever been as jealous of anyone as I am of Alice right now.”

Macy laughed and threw an arm around Robin, relieved that as much as the two might drift apart in the future, on some level they’d always be on the same wavelength. Down here, in a dingy basement of an abandoned gas station where an unknown number of minor wizards had been kidnapped and kept apart from their friends, she felt like she and Robin had grown just the tiniest bit closer together. What an uplifting story.

* * *

Much later and far away, in an ostentatiously decorated foyer secreted behind an iron vault door, in a part of the narrative someone else is usually here to handle, Ashton “Ash” Gray-Rider and Masse “Seyv” Yvoire sulked. Seyv paced furiously, arms crossed behind his back, averting his gaze from the various pilfered goods which decorate the walls; Ash floated above it all.

“I’m just saying,” said Ash, sounding entirely too self-satisfied as he twirled a purple yoyo emblazoned with a yellow star on his finger in a manner which indicated he had no idea how to use a yo-yo. “We made out pretty well, when you think about it. I mean, we didn’t literally make out with anyone, but they can’t all be winners.”

“It’s not enough,” Seyv snapped back. “We’re planning a war, and despite your assurances, this operation was foiled before we could gather even a tenth of what we’d need for that.”

Ash blew a raspberry. “Whatever, bro. You’re just mad because your girlfriend or whatever showed up and ruined it, and then you totally bailed.”

Seyv didn’t say anything about the girlfriend remark, instead saying, “So what if I’m mad about that? I’d had a lot of different ideas about how I’d meet up with her again, and this was not one of them. Besides, that’s not why I bailed.” He withdrew the sai from his cloaked and pointed it in the direction of the wizard — a wholly empty gesture, given that Ash was several meters vertically out of reach. “Your magical defenses were insufficient to repel an invasion. We couldn’t have stayed there.”

He shrugged. “My defenses can’t be insufficient if I forgot to put them up. That’s why they call me the Forgetting Wizard, after all.”

“They call you that because of the spell you have to make people forget things, idiot.”

“Do they?” He grabbed the end of the yo-yo, bringing it to a stop with an unsatisfying smack. “I forgot about that. Besides, you can give all the posterior hocus-pocus justifications you want, but in the moment?” He smirked. “You fled because you didn’t want to talk to your girl.”

“Hmph.” Seyv sat down. “Why did  _ you _ flee, then?”

“Felt like it. There’s only so much I’m willing to risk my own hide, you know. Better to escape with something than get decked in the schnoz by a bunch of nerds.”

“Well put,” called a third voice. Nearby, a bathroom door swung open, and Bandit Princess walked out in a set of red pajamas with a yellow rubber-duckie pattern, a piece of toilet paper stuck to her foot. She had the sword Scarlet held precariously over her shoulder, and it was for some reason sopping wet. “I can certainly appreciate the value of some well-applied selfishness.”

Ash’s face scrunched up as he lowered himself onto the ground, a good distance away from Masse just in case. “Did you wash your hands?”

“No, because I’m evil.”

“Fair enough.”

Seyv stood up. “Listen, boss, I’m starting to have second thoughts about this plan. Not for moral reasons,” he added hastily. “It was my idea, after all.”

BP raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Nobody said anything about moral reasons.”

“Good,” he replied, glancing around nervously. “My worry is that this might be a bit riskier than it’s worth. I wasn’t around Macy super long, but I get the feeling she’s some kind of hero now. If she knows we exist, that makes our job harder. Even if she doesn’t, all the major kingdoms have ties to Wizard City, so they’ll all be on high alert.”

At this, the cruel thief flashed a too-wide toothy grin. “That’s why we don’t attack a major kingdom,” she said. “Steal what you can get your hands on, not what you dream of owning. We were always going to have to start small, with someplace that can really give us a leg up, and I think I know just the place.”

“Oh, yeah?” asked Ash. This was the first he’d heard of starting small, or almost anything about an overarching plan beyond the mere hints of its existence. “What’s the scoop?”

“How much do you know about goblins?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, now they're being ominous on purpose, and so is Bandit Princess.
> 
> Fun fact about this chapter: It was originally not supposed to be part of “Below”. Originally, it was going to be the first post-“Below” story, with all the direct ties (Robin joining the Crabapple Crew, zhir new eye, the destruction of the portal) being taken care of at the end of the last chapter of the story proper. As I've mentioned before, I rearranged some beats to reduce the number of chapters Macy and the others would spend underwater, a result of which was necessitating this chapter doubling as a cap on that storyline. I think it works better like this; although the whole Leaf Man getting kidnapped plot is a bit more rushed than I would have liked, this story isn't set up to play out that kind of drama on a whole-chapter basis; it works better as a framework for Macy's delayed catharsis, which along with cementing Robin as an all-out wizard provides a much better resolution to their arcs over the course of the 8-parter than the end of the previous chapter would have, even with Macy's receiving her second sword from Finn.
> 
> There are a lot of moving parts in this chapter, including the glancing reunion of Macy and Masse (something I'm not yet willing to fully discuss), but here's something I do want to talk about: the Crabapple Crew. Specifically, the fact that as far as I'm aware, nobody's exploring this dynamic, even though it's rife with club anime energy. It's not even that it's not shippy enough to be fic fodder, because the woefully unexplored Ice King / Abracadaniel ship is right there! I'm not even a shipper and I ship it! (Finn / HW and Bubbline don't count because they're canon, Susan / Frieda doesn't count because it's _basically_ canon, and HW / Wildberry Princess doesn't count because it's absolute nonsense that I only ship as part of some absurdist piece of performance art.) The bonus story this week also deals with that particular secret cabal, but I want to see more people explore that space. Get on it, and tag it “Thanks for the Crabapples” if you do.
> 
> Now, my decision to expand the roster of the Crabapple Crew from the original cast of the episode may seem strange, because it is, but really, my only motive was to give the impression that time had passed via the introduction of new elements commingled with the familiar — something I try to do with a lot of the worldbuilding. As a bonus, I get to diversify the roles of the water nymphs by introducing Barb, who takes over their shared role as the Abbott to everyone else's Costello (albeit in her own, uniquely weird way) so the rest of them are free to find their own niches. I probably didn't need to tell you this, since the rule-of-three reveal of their day jobs throughout the episode basically spelled it out, but there it is in writing.
> 
> On the topic of groups, let's talk about one particular trio of characters in this episode: Finn, Amaranth, and Tiffany destroying the portal. Once again, Tiffany was not a part of this episode when I first conceived of it, or even of that scene, but once I realized how useful he'd be in tying together the narrative of “The Portal”, I knew he had to show up here as well. His dynamic with Finn in the original show gives me life, and allowing an older, wiser, but somehow slightly less patient Finn play off the older and completely unchanged Tiffany, even for a brief moment, was really fun. Amaranth was there, too.
> 
> Okay, fine. Ash, Masse (or Seyv), and Bandit Princess are a trio of characters I've known were going to be a trio from minute go. I don't remember if I introduced Ash into the story specifically to be the one who kidnapped Leaf Man, but the kidnapping plot had never existed without these three being responsible for it. The motives have shifted somewhat — here, it's a coincidence that Masse runs into Macy, whereas originally Leaf Man had been targeted specifically because of that one-degree-removed connection. In the end, I decided that it didn't make much sense for a vendetta to exist between our heroes and villains just yet which would motivate such a thing, besides which this way works better as a comedic anticlimax. Bandit Princess has “creating a reason for the heroes and villains to have a vendetta” covered, believe you me.
> 
> As a reminder, your discussion prompt is: What's a time you've joined a club or other casual social group where you feel your membership has positively impacted your life, especially your mental health? For me, it's the Discord server of liveblogger MissFinefeather, for reasons I don't have the characters to go into, sorry. Ask me in the comments.
> 
> And finally, next time on Adventure Ball Z:  
> “If we was to become hardcore adventurers like our M&M characters, do you think we’d be pulled apart by the insurmountable forces of destiny, compelled to duke it out in some cosmic dance of vengeance or whatever?”


	10. Legs All the Way Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaf Man decides to thank Macy for saving him from Masse Yvoire by inviting her over to his house.
> 
> Chapter 28 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous commentary: “I did a uh-oh.
> 
> “This is just a public service announcement about a major problem I just noticed. I'll delete once the next actual chapter goes up.
> 
> “So, I (or someone) made a whoopsie at some point. For some reason all of Chapter 7 was the text for Chapter 8, meaning everything from the destruction of the quartz crystals to the destruction of the sub — including the sealing of Magolith, the death of a salesfish, and Robin getting zhir eye, and two of those events are even important! — were erased from time by the power of my stand, American Idiot. It should be fixed now, but I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't needed to reference the missing chapter for a point of continuity.
> 
> “Sorry about this, but also, how the hell did none of _you_ notice? Was it fine before and just spontaneously broke when I put up chapter 8? I have to assume that was the case because nobody said ‘hey idiot you uploaded the same chapter twice.’”
> 
> Anyway, now we're _actually_ -actually in the post- _below_ world. This chapter is just a fun lil ditty; there's not much I can say about it, other than that I'm glad I'm back to writing more stuff like this. Oh, and also my computer is completely borked and my buffer is nearly depleted. Wish me luck!
> 
> The discussion question is: What's some advice that you've given, or been given, that's helped you, or someone else, out?

“And once I’d taken out all forty-seven kidnappers, I broke open the cages and set the wizards free. So that’s the story of how I basically saved everyone, probably, again.”

Macy was telling this story, as she had told so many others, standing on top of a rickety table in the school cafeteria. Her dramatic declarations and wild gesticulations were met with awestruck gapes and gasping awe. On either side of her, her lunch buddies — Sprightly the wheat stalk, and a rat transfer student named Nom Chompsie — hyped up her story with cheering and pointing. Many other students listened with rapt attention, ignoring their food (which their less interested classmates ate while they were distracted). The lunch legume glared at her, disapproving of the raucous ruckus she was provoking but powerless to stop her.

Her audience breaking out into a respectable level of applause, Macy began to slip back into her seat when she heard a slow, sarcastic clap from behind her. “What a lovely story,  _ calabaza,” _ said a familiar voice. “But please don’t tell me you expect us to believe this one.”

Macy turned around to sit backward in her chair as she stared down the well-dressed marshmallow who had addressed her. “Alright, Trid,” she said, crossing her arms over the chair’s back, “I’ll admit I may have exaggerated a few details, but I don’t think that’s what this is really about. You just refuse to acknowledge that I have more awesomeness than you.”

Astrida snapped her fingers; the elementals flanking her, one fire and one ice (her lieutenants Coalby and Jasleet), squared up behind her in a cool pose. “Do not challenge me to an awesome-off. Also, don’t call me Trid. We’re not there yet. We’re not even in the general direction of there. You will address me as  _ la Señora _ Astrida Mariana del Río Sangriento Compela y Jiménez, queen of the blacktop and defender of the immortal hall pass.”

Macy considered this. “No, I probably won’t,” she said. “We’ll split the difference; I’ll call you Astrida.”

Astrida waved her hand dismissively.  _ “Servirá. _ But do not call me a fool. Your stories are good for entertainment, I suppose, but passing them off as true is dishonest. All of those accomplishments you pretend, all the minions you claim to have cut down, it’s all so broken for one simple reason.”

Macy leaned back in her chair, which caused her to fall off because she was sitting backwards; Sprightly moved to help her back up, but the wheat stalk was so weak that it didn’t speed things up even a little. “Wuzzat?” she asked when she was sitting upright again.

“It’s not relatable.”

A beat.

Macy reached behind her, almost knocking over her glass of orange juice before grabbing it, taking several long gulps, and swallowing. “How’s that?” she asked.

“The Macy of your stories has no flaws!” exclaimed Astrida. “She doesn’t have any inner turmoil. She has all these skills, but she doesn’t have to confront any personal failings or imperfections because all of her problems are solved by those skills, and they haven’t been earned. It just completely kicks me out of the story.” Coalby nodded in agreement, but Jasleet quirked his head in confusion.

“Macy’s got plenty of flaws,” interrupted Nom Chompsie, briefly setting down his stale baguette. “She’s got no ears, her teeth can’t even chew through a  _ little _ steel, and sometimes when she starts to think about something too hard, she can get—”

Without looking, Macy punched Nom in the snout. “The details don’t matter,” she said hastily. “The point is, what in the four squares of Glob are you talking about?”

Astrida shook her head. “Those are disabilities, so they do not count.”

“Why not?”

_ “Cállate. _ Also, you barely talk about them anyway.”

“Because it’s personal!” Macy could feel her OJ hand trembling, so she reached back to set it on the table (she missed, dropping it to the floor, where it miraculously landed perfectly upright). “Crepe on a bed of buttered grits with hollow dane sauce, Trid, you’ve got some awful high standards for schoolyard boasts.”

“This is no schoolyard,” Astrida observed. “Besides, you’re the one setting those unreasonable expectations. Everyone has a weakness, other than the other ones, which don’t count. If you’re going to pretend otherwise, you don’t get to act surprised when people hold you to that.”

Macy rolled her eyes, turning around to sit normal in her chair and face away from Astrida (knocking over the OJ in the process). “That’s what you think. I don’t have any weaknesses, because I trained them out, and also take antipsychotics now.”

“Wow, M-macy,” said Sprightly. “So you’re n-not afraid of bugs a-anymore?”

Behind Macy, Astrida chortled.

After shooting Sprightly a glower, Macy half-turned to redirect the look toward Astrida. “What’s that about, then?”

_ “Ay, no es nada,” _ she said, stifling laughter. “your character is just more —  _ snrk _ — relatable now.  _ Vámonos, _ gang.” She walked away with her lieutenants, discussing under their breaths.

Macy sighed. “Well, that’s not something I’d wanted to get out. Thanks, Sprightly.”

Sprightly gave an all-too-genuine smile. “You’re w-welcome, friend.”

“Did you forget my name?”

“I th-think I had too m-much coffee this morning.”

* * *

A chill breeze, impossibly clean, blew through the alcove atop Castle Jugland’s peak spire, the highest point in the city. Up here, one could see nearly to the seas in the north on a clear day, with the aid of the telescope permanently situated there. Today, however, was not a clear day, so as the young peanut Penne Pasta Jugland gazed through the telescope (with Macy in a blue-grey hoodie holding her up so she could reach), she couldn’t see much past the rolling clouds cresting the far side of the Sienna Ridge. She didn’t care. She liked the funny shapes they made.

“You know,” Robin observed, sticking zhir head out over the city and lolling zhir tongue, “I could probably hold Penny up. I’m great at being a stepstool.”

“Nuh-uh!” said Penny, jostling the telescope and nearly making Macy lose her grip. “You’re smelly, and you’d prob’ly drop me.”

Robin scoffed. “Well, I’d cert’ly drop you if you said something like that.” Zhe stretched zhir nose around to zhir back and sniffed. “Okay, maybe you’ve got a point. Bleh.”

“Hey,  _ Núdalín,” _ Macy lilted, “have you gotten a nice good long look at the birds? Ready for me to put you down yet? Because, sure, I’m, like, super strong and stuff, but my arms are getting just a wee mite tired.”

“Hm? Birds?” Penny pulled away from the telescope. “Oh, right. Yeah, I’m done. Birds were good. They were, like, super bird-y and stuff.”

Macy placed Penny down gently, gave her a noogie, and then checked the telescope. “Now it’s my turn. Penny, pick me up.”

“Okay!” Penny reached her arms underneath Macy and tried to yank her up by the hoodie; though she struggled for about ten seconds, she didn’t get anywhere. Finally, she stepped back and panted, defeated. “No can do, Aunt Damy. My weak poet arms are too frail.”

“I love you anyways.” She started looking through the telescope herself, panning around to look for the birds Penny had just been observing. After all, they were super bird-y, and Macy didn’t want to miss the chance to find out what that meant.

She spotted a robin, which is to say that her entire field of view was suddenly occluded by Robin staring into the telescope with zhir mismatched red-and-blue gemstone eyes. In startlement, she nearly dropped the telescope over the railing, only barely managing to catch it. “Cripes, Robin,” she gasped, “why’d you do that?”

Zhe tapped Macy on the shoulder with zhir hind leg, prompting her to turn around. “Message for you.”

Indeed there was. The castle messenger was stopped over at the top of the stairs, exhaling heavily after the long jog up, his breath crystallizing in the wintry, high-altitude morning air. In his hand he held an envelope, which he extended to Macy when he noticed she’d noticed him. “Addressed from Wizard City,” he panted.

Macy took the envelope and carefully opened it. There was no paper inside; instead, a pile of tiny twigs and sprouts fell out of the envelope and blew away on the wind.

Robin squinted at the plant matter. “It’s from Leaf Man,” zhe said. “He says he’s inviting you over to his place as thanks for saving him last week.”

Penny clapped her hands. “Wow, you’re so cool, Aunt Damy!” she exclaimed. “You get invited to parties with grownups. The only grownup parties I get to go to are mommy’s bird parties.”

“Hold on, what about the Ice Kingdom?” corrected Robin. “When we all went up to Icy University, you came along with us for that.”

“That wasn’t a party,” Macy reminded zhir. “That was a treaty signing, and Penny spent half her time there at the library.”

“That’s because the books you brought were  _ boring!” _ She stomped her lil foot. “I had to go find some cool books instead.”

Macy feigned going in for a noogie with her right hand, so that when Penny dodged out of the way, Macy struck a vicious tickle with her dominant left. “Believe what you want,” she said as her niece doubled over with involuntary laughter. “One day, you’ll learn to apple str—  _ appreciate _ the elegant yet informative prose of Lionel Rednose’s compensative coin-collecting guide.”

Robin raised an eyebrow. “But you don’t even collect coins.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

_ “What _ principle?” Penny and Robin said at the exact same time.

Macy smiled smugly, refusing to answer. She didn’t need to. She was quite literally (if hyperbolically) on top of the world, and nothing could tarnish her—

* * *

“Eek! A bug!” Macy shrieked, falling over onto her backpack like an overturned tortoise.

Robin pulled Macy to her feet. “Pardon my friend’s incredible rudeness,” zhe said. “I’ve tried to make her into a wild child, but despite all her huntress training, you just can’t take the city out of the girl.”

“I’ll take the stupid out of your face,” she muttered as she dusted herself off. “I’m fine, really. I’m glad you invited me.”

Leaf Man nodded, sitting on top of a rustling bush next to a crystal-clear oasis surrounded with palm trees and similar shrubbery. He said nothing, but gestured once again to a small, storm shelter-style trapdoor woven out of the bush’s roots.

Grimacing, Macy reached down to touch the handle of the door, but before she could, half a dozen round, black beetles materialized in the cracks. She yelped and jumped backwards, shaking her hand like it was burned.

Robin flicked zhir tail nervously, trying to decode Macy’s behavior. “Okay, then,” zhe ventured slowly, “this isn’t going well. Mayhap we should do this at another locale?”

Leaf Man shrugged and nodded.

“No, no, no,” Macy insisted, waving her hands in front of her. “That won’t do. I don’t want to take up your time.”

He shrugged and nodded.

“I’ll just have to brave up and come on in to your surely lovely home.” Cautiously, she advanced toward the door, reaching out with a foot and trepidatiously opening the door. She flinched when it collapsed outward with a woody think, but all seemed fine.

“Very good!” exclaimed Robin, clapping and conjuring illusory trumpets to play a synthesized fanfare. “I’m proud of you, Macy. I’m being extremely sincere, and I do hope it’s carrying through in the tone of my voice.”

“It’s not,” Macy assured zhir as she descended the dirt-hewn steps into a candlelit entrance chamber, “but we can work more on that later. I, uh…”

A beat.

Leaf Man and Robin ran over to follow Macy. She was standing on the second step from the bottom, staring at a figure standing in the middle of the oval-shaped room the staircase entered into: a large, hairy tarantula.

“That’s Barry,” Leaf Man said by way of explanation. He grabbed Macy’s hand and pulled it forward; Barry lifted a segmented leg to shake it in response.

Macy screamed, turned around, and ran right on out of there as if she’d just seen something scary. Even as she did so, she felt three simultaneous pangs hit her heart — one of self-disappointment, one of awkwardness, and one grieving the wonderful spider friendship she knew she would never experience after having tarnished it this day.

* * *

The sun hung high in the sky above, casting dancing shadows through barren branches onto the uneven white carpet below as a pack midnight-blue wolves raced through. These were no simple wolves, led by pack instinct to chase their migrating prey until some poor fool broke from the ranks. No, these were whywolves, terrifying intellectual beasts who sought out explanations for the curious and unusual before eating the people who gave them. Today, though, they were not running through the Evil Forest in pursuit of some cosmic mystery. They were fleeing.

They could not tell what was chasing them, for any time anyone tried to look, they would report back something else — a winged ferret, a thunder board, even a dreaded hugwolf. Whenever they thought they had outrun it, it would appear in front of them, forcing the pack to change directions suddenly. Whatever this force was, it kept pursuing them until they reached the edge of the woods. They kept running through the vast plains beyond, hoping that their endurance would let them escape what their cleverness could not. None of them wasted the few seconds needed to look back after this; if they did, they might have seen a large, blue, amorphous shape lurking behind one of the larger trees at the forest’s edge, before it slunk back into the dappled shadows.

Then it heard familiar footsteps and transformed back into Huntress Wizard, wearing her brown work cloak over a green tunic. “What are you doing out here?” she asked. “This is a mad nasty mission. You shouldn’t have tagged along.”

Razz Wildberry stepped forward from the trees, swaddled in scarves of various colors so that she could barely see. “I do what I want,” she said, though her voice was a tad muffled. “I haven’t seen you use that form before. Is it new?”

“I’ve been testing it out. I saw something like that last year, back when I first met Macy; I’m not sure what it was? But I thought it might make a good addition to my toolset. Not sure how I feel about it at the moment.”

“Give it some rest, then; you always come round right in the end. Anyway, there is a reason I came out here. I received a call from that student of yours.”

“I know you know her name, Jammies.”

Razz snapped her fingers. “Macy! Sorry, it wasn’t coming to my head. Point is, she’s in a bit of a j— a bit of a funk about something, and she might benefit from having you help her through it.”

“A funk?” HW raised an eyebrow. “I’m in the middle of routing out the invasive species that had made their home in the Evil Forest while my old mentor was in league with the grass dragon. Are you suggesting that I put this delicate work on hold for a funk?”

“I didn’t suggest anything, Hunnybuns.”

“Well, suggest it.” She turned around, folded her arms, and fell backward into her girlfriend’s, who surprised herself by being able to actually catch the planking goblin. “This stuff is pretty boring, and I’ve got not much juice in my system. How’s about you take us back home, I write a  _ very _ inspiring letter to Macy about whatever this funk is, drink that juice, and save today for cuddles so I can come out here with full energy tomorrow?”

Razz considered this. “I like most of that plan, except for the part where apparently I need to carry the protector of the wilderness home.”

The huntress puckered her cheeks and kissed Razz on the one exposed section of cheek, eliciting a giggle.

With a burst of strength she’d been saving up all week, Razz scooped HW up fully and carried her draped across both arms. “Fair enough,” she said effervescently as she gazed right into her girlfriend’s green, catlike eyes. “Come on, then. Let’s get those brain cells a-jogging. I may have been a poultice-maker longer than I was a princess, but that doesn’t mean I’ll abide substandard florid prose.”

Huntress Wizard smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

* * *

One week later, Macy was in the Valley of Moths — a place with a similarly winter-barren, if much less sinister, forest — showing some of her and Robin’s favorite mushroom-foraging spots to some friends of hers. In addition to Sprightly and Nom, there was Bran Don and Slick the Sunflower from archery club, the school’s resident think-they’re-a-secret couple Coalby and Zeke, and a bookish flaxseed named Flynn who had once lent Macy a pungent-smelling spiral notebook. Macy was wearing her ranger hat today, along with her ranger cloak, her ranger boots, and her ranger flare gun tucked in a belt holster where her sword would normally be. The latter was a precondition for Slick’s understandably-worried parents to let her out of the city proper; no amount of only somewhat greatly exaggerated anecdotes let Macy convince them their daughter would have nothing to worry about with her around. If anything, it did the opposite.

They had just happened upon a bed of brown toadstools and were examining them for serial numbers when Bran called out to the others. “Hey, um, by which I mean, come look at this,” he said, scratching his head with his weird tree arm. “There’s what looks like it might possibly be similar to, you know, by which I guess I mean I assume there’s a chance you might know, uh, I forgot what I was saying.” A beat. “I think I see something weird.”

Slick paused what she was doing to dramatically spin around. “Weird in what manner?” she asked, deepening and projecting her voice as in a play. “Weird, like a single puff of snow set loose by the shaking of an evergreen’s bough, rolling down the mountain until it forms into an avalanche? Weird, like the color the sky turns at sea when the sun’s rays hit the interplanetary debris field just right? Weird, like a man who spends his whole life searching for for meaning yet in the process turning away every opportunity to do good work for his neighbors, ‘til at last he dies without a lick of sense?”

He reached down and picked up something small and beige. “Weird like a piece of paper someone dropped.”

He had scarcely finished the sentence when Macy pounced on him, snatching up the paper from his hands. “There’s a litterer afoot!” she growled. “Someone’s gonna pay for this. I bet it’s one of those college kids Jordathan swore he was gonna keep in line.”

“He wouldn’t like that,” Zeke chimed in. He had his arm slung around Coalby, whose flame body was singing his jacket. “My bro takes his word seriously.”

“Shush!” Macy insisted. “Let me concentrate. There’s some writing on here. If I can identify it, I can… oh. It’s, uh, it’s addressed to me.”

In the baffled silence that followed they all heard a small cough coming from down below, where Bran had found the letter. Macy peered down and saw a small, yellow snail wearing a blue hat and carrying a large burlap sack. The others noticed her notice this, and thus crowded around her.

“It’s snail mail,” Nom observed.

The snail spoke up in a surprisingly deep voice. “Can you confirm that you are, in fact, the same Macadamia the Nut to whom this letter was addressed?”

“I’m pretty sure,” she said, squinting at the incomprehensible squiggle that passed for a return address on what she now realized was an envelope. “The other five Macadamias in the Duchy of Nuts probably wouldn’t be receiving mail from someone named, based on this, uh…” She snapped her fingers, searching for a word.

“Cacography?” suggested Coalby.

“Sure. Someone named Heathers Ulgaud, who I presume is supposed to be Huntress Wizard.” She sniffed it. “Yeah, it’s for me. I’d recognize that rustic, meat-infused scent anywhere.”

“Good enough for me,” said the snail. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll have you shipped to outer space as a snack for the Mother Lard, which is definitely something I can do.” And they snailed away, at a snail’s pace.

Sprightly peeked over Macy’s nonexistent shoulder as she opened the envelope, revealing a letter. “So th-that’s from your teacher, H-huntress Wizard? The h-hot lady who saved me at y-your birthday party a f-few months ago?” Macy nodded.

In the background, Flynn pushed up their rhinestone glasses and spoke up in a voice that sounded like they had a perpetual cold and was newly surprised by that every time they talked. “And she sends a letter? Does she not have a cell phone?”

“I’m pretty sure she does,” Macy said absently, speed-reading the letter before she crumpled it up into a ball. “She just doesn’t like calling people.” She popped the rolled up letter into her mouth and swallowed it, in order to avoid littering.

“W-what’s it say?” asked Sprightly, leaning up against Macy.

“Not telling. It’s personal.”

“She told Macy that a ‘pro-body’ should be tolerant of all manners of living creatures, including bugs,” announced Slick, leaning against her other side, “but that she can progress toward that ideal at her own pace. Not sure what a pro-body is supposed to mean, and there’s a bit more elaboration, but that’s the gist of it.”

“Hey!” Macy pulled away from the two, causing Sprightly to fall into the mushroom patch. “Don’t be nosy. This is private business. Everyone, forget you heard that.”

“Done,” Ezekiel and Nom said at the exact same time.

“Coalby,” she continued, pointing a threatening finger, “you especially. Don’t breathe a word of this to Astrida, you hear me? This etymophobia thing is just a dusty mineshaft, nothing—”

“Entomophobia,” interrupted Flynn.

“I have both.”

“Uh, it’s a little late for that,” Coalby said. “I mean, considering you basically admitted it to her face last Oneday. But anyway, not that this is my place to ask or anything, but why do you care so much if Astrida knows?”

Macy felt a warmth rise into her cheeks. “I don’t, obviously. Never mind. Forget this; let’s look for chanterelles next.”

As she led the others deeper into the woods, though, her mind was wandering. She was very quickly losing control of this situation. If she was going to correct course, she knew she couldn’t make a liar of herself. In order to avoid putting her foot in her mouth, she would have to walk her talk, even though that sounds like it would very specifically involve putting her foot in her mouth. Whatever. The point was, she’d need to do the impossible and visit Leaf Man. This was absolutely the most important thing, ever.

* * *

“So.”

The foyer of Castle Jugland, with its two half-spiral staircases going up along the sides and a gleaming, newly tamper-proofed chandelier hanging from the middle, was an impressive sight on a normal day. Now, the chandelier’s fluorescent bulbs had been dimmed to near nothing, and an effluvious aroma of cinnamon and myrrh wafted through the chamber, originating from two impossibly-bright candles at the tops of the twin banisters. Between them stood Vesper, their normal white cloak decorated with sashes of red, green, and black. Their voice was deep and hoarse, suggesting they’d inhaled a bit too much incense smoke setting up the scene.

“You’re in a bind,” they continued, “and, presumably having exhausted all saner options, you’ve come to me.”

Macy, standing in the entrance next to a befuddled but paid-off door attendant, paused for a moment to process that sentence. “Um, this is sorta the first thing I jumped to, actually?” she said. “I mean, I figured I’d take advantage of the family rate, since I’m like 72% sure we’re cousins.”

Vesper made a meaningless, yet suitably dramatic, hand gesture. “Cousins we be, yea or nay,” they declared, “the result is the same. You have invoked my dark provenance, and you have willfully entered my accurséd domain.”

“This is the lobby, and it hasn’t been accurséd for months, since we hired Peace Master to get rid of those ironic ghosts. After  _ you _ failed, if I recall correctly, so—”

“Shut up!” they squeaked. They cleared their throat. “I mean, silence, mortal. You have chosen the path of the occult to help you overcome your fear. I warn you, this is not a shortcut. It will not get you where you want easier, only faster. A weak heart cannot sustain it. I must know the contents of your heart, Macadamia. Tell me: Since starting your course of antipsychotics, have you experienced increased levels of anxiety, dizziness, sedation, or tardive dyskinesia?”

Macy shook her head. “Not  _ increased _ , no. Certainly no…” She paused, formulating a phrase syllable by syllable on her tongue. “Tardive dyskinesia. Got it in one. A bit of akathisia, but that’s it.” She pointed down to her foot to demonstrate, and indeed it was flopping about and doing a happy little dance.

“Are you sure?” asked Vesper. “No oculogyric crisis?”

“Well, I roll my eyes a lot when I’m around Robin, but that’s normal.”

“Very good. Then I have one last question for you. Are you ready?”

“I budded ready.” A beat. “Wait, ready for what?”

“Immersion.” Before Macy could react, Vesper waved their cloak around, the candles blew out, and the foyer was plunged into near-darkness.

Macy’s eyes were good, but the sudden change left them unable to focus for a bit. She could see that something was moving across the carpet, but she couldn’t make out exactly what it was. She also felt a curious sensation she hadn’t experienced in years — a tingling formication, starting from her feet and moving upwards. She kept her eyes peeled, though, on the lookout for… for…

Wait a minute. Carpet? The floor of the foyer was wood boards.

Her eyes were working just fine now. She was surrounded on all sides — it seemed wider than the room normally was — by a sea of frothing, scuttling, tailgating creepy-crawlies of all assortment and variety. She spotted ants, centipedes, wasps, mantises, and even the most terrifying of them all: butterflies.

Terror filled her like the mawkish fragrance of the incensed candles clogging her lungs. Paralysis overcame her; even her restless leg rested. She began to feel a way she had felt less and less recently, like her mind was flowing down the river of time. She tried to drag herself back, focusing on a concrete sensation, but the only one she could isolate was the feeling of bugs crawling up her waist, onto her arms — no, that wasn’t worth it. She gave up and entered the dream.

She stood in a field she’d visited before, on a field trip hosted by the Marshmallow Rangers to teach the orphans about outdoorsing. Princeso was busy making sure the younger kids didn’t eat anything too belly-achingly sweet, so Macy and Masse had slipped away to a nearby brook. Macy was wearing a white button-down shirt and a forest green skirt, while Masse was decked out in a blue and white toga. On some level, Macy knew these outfits were not just wrong but impossible for the scene, but that level was currently inaccessible.

“Hey, Macy?” said Masse, drawing a circle in the river below them with a long white sai.

“Yeah, Masse?” asked Macy, sticking a foot into the river. In the rippling wake downstream, the water turned into bugs. She retracted her foot.

“I’ve been thinkin’.” Masse shoved his hand into the water, and when he pulled it out, he was grasping Leaf Man by the foot. “About fish, and how dumb they are.”

“I’m with you so far.” Macy leaned back, expecting to feel cool grasses against her back, but it was just more bugs.

“If we was to become hardcore adventurers like our M&M characters, do you think we’d be pulled apart by the insurmountable forces of destiny, compelled to duke it out in some cosmic dance of vengeance or whatever?”

“I dunno.” She reached her finger to the sky, and she poked a hole in it; water began to rain down on her, and where it hit her, it turned into bugs. “I think most of this has just been one long series of coincidences anyway.”

“Maybe the universe is usin’ that agin’ us. Makin’ us think we’re just two random bozos, guided by nuttin’ but the whims of fortune’s ‘scrutible gambit, and then blam! Suddenly all that claptrap was destiny all along.” He threw Leaf Man back into the river, and though Macy couldn’t see it from her angle, she heard a much louder splash than there should have been.

“Whoa!” Startled, she sat up, her joints wobbling. She had the peculiar sensation of remembering having remembered this once before. Or perhaps something halfway between this and reality.

As she rose, she saw what had been the source of the loud splash. Standing in the rivulet was a large, rotund figure, solid red and white and coated in a matte finish, with a stethoscope around its neck and a helper’s hat on its head. “Hello!” it called forth, hands on hips. “I was wondering if I could be of some assistance. This seems like just the job for me.”

Macy skilted, even as she felt the ground shift beneath her feet with that motion. “Uh, who are you?”

Next to her, Masse rolled his eyes. “Aw, c’mon, Damy. You’ve gotta be quicker’n that. This clown’s obviously a metaphysical manifestation of your antipsychotic medication attempting to suppress this hallucination.”

“Oh yeah? And how would you know that? You shouldn’t even know that I’m taking medication!”

Masse knocked himself on the head. “Uh, because I’m  _ obvs _ a mental construct of Masse drawn from your memories but knowing everything you know, onto whom you’ve been projectin’ your more devious personality traits for longer’n you’d like to admit, duh-doy.”

“Indeed!” proclaimed the antipsychotics. “And for that, you must die.” It pointed an arm at Masse, the arm turned into a futuristic laser cannon, it fired, and then there was a hole in reality through which Macy could see the stars on the far side of the world.

“What are you doing‽” she screamed, running up to him to attack him but instead tripping and faceplanting into the rivulet. “You’re a madcap,” she gurgled. “You’re gonna destroy everything.”

“This world is false,” it said. “It is my role to cleanse it from your consciousness, so that you might return to the corporeal plane.”

“No, dude, you can’t send me back!” She bolted upright even as the water turned to bugs at her feet; she grabbed the antipsychotics by the waist and shook it. “There’s so many bugs. Just let me stay here for a while longer. Here, nothing bad can happen.”

A stretchy paw reached its way through the hole in reality where Masse had once stood, and Robin tapped Macy on the shoulder. The paw morphed into a mouth, which then said, “Actually, there aren’t any bugs. There never were.”

“Oh.” And like that, she woke up.

She was seated on the wooden, non-undulating floor of the foyer, now well-lit with the reactivated chandelier but suffused with the smell of the still-burning candles. Robin was next to her, wrapped around her like a blanked; Vesper had come down from the balcony and approached closer, a deeply apologetic look on their still-shadowed face. Just as she took in the scene, someone she recognized as the door attendant ran up to her and gave her a bottle of water; she took it from her, giving her a wordless thumbs-up in thanks, and then started gulping it down like a feral animal. Stale, room-temperature tap water had never tasted so good in her entire life, and statistically it never would again.

When at last she’d guzzled so much water that she started to choke a little and the doornut had to wrest the bottle from her grasp, she breathed a deep, shaky sigh. Huh. She was shaking. When did that happen? “Well, that could have gone better,” she said, forcing a chuckle, though it didn’t sound much like a chuckle out loud.

Robin merely kept gazing at zhir best friend (who had to admit that, thematically appropriate as they were, zhir mismatched eyes still sometimes disconcerted her). “Macy, that couldn’t have gone  _ worse. _ That went so bad, when I ask you if you’re okay in a couple seconds, I probably won’t accept ‘yes’ for an answer. Are you okay?”

“Yeeeeeeeeefinitely not.” Wow, her leg was really going at it now. She placed her hands on her knee, forcing it to still. “Yefinitely not,” she repeated. “That’s my answer, and I’m…” She was out of breath.

“I’m so sorry,” said Vesper. “I had no idea it would affect you this badly. Had I realized the extent of your condition sooner, I would never have agreed to this.”

Macy took several attempts at deep breaths; the last one was almost normal-sized, which she figured was as good as she’d get. “I probably wouldn’t have, either. I mean, if I’d known. But I also wouldn’t have agreed if I’d known you were going to bring like a shlamillion bugs into the castle. Those are gonna be everywhere now, and there’s not a nothing I can’t undo about that.”

“Please, cousin, give me some credit. You have nothing to worry about. Those bugs were mere illusions, imprints of spirits given transient form by the powers of the netherworldly bureaucracy, yet now once again banished as quick as they came.”

Rising unsteadily on her still-twitching legs, Macy attempted to stand. It took several tries and Robin becoming a cane, but she managed. “Well, there’s some good news, then,” she croaked. Just by standing, she could feel her strength returning. There was still a great psychic pressure in her mind telling her to fight or flee, but it was growing less overpowering by the minute.

“That’s relative,” said her cane. “Macy, I get that you’re into this whole ‘being polite’ thing, but once you accidentally traumatize yourself and potentially worsen a childhood phobia, it’s time to skewer the kebab. Maybe one day you’ll be ready to face your fears, but that day isn’t gonna be on time to visit Leaf Man’s house.”

Macy dropped her cane, letting Robin resume zhir indoor form, so she could look zhir in the eyes. “It’s not just about that anymore. It’s about integrity and pride. If there’s a part of me that’s holding me back, I’m gonna track it down and kick my own butt if that’s what it takes. And before you give me any of that claptrap about how all heroes have flaws or whatever,” she said, raising a hand to the objection that was already forming on Robin’s lips, “that’s no excuse. Once you know you’ve got a problem, the only thing to do is work on finding a solution. Now, whether that means overcoming this fear, learning to work through it, or just finding some way around it, I dunno, but I’m not gonna stop until I’ve done it.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” came a new, utterly ridiculous voice from the castle entrance. Macy whirled around, nearly falling over once more, to see the castle butler Lisby standing in the threshold, holding a tray full of sandwiches. “I was hoping you could take a break for snacks.”

* * *

“Mm.” Macy licked the mustard off her fingers as she, her dad, Robin, and Lisby sat around the dining room table beneath a skylit ceiling, an array of mini-sandwiches set before them along with pitchers of juice. “Let me tell you, that really hit the spot.”

“Okay,” said Robin. “You can tell me.”

Macy scooted her chair a bit toward Robin and cleared her throat. “That really hit the spot.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“Thanks for thanking me.”

“Macy,” the Duke started, holding a sandwich in the air, then stopped. A beat. “Macy,” he restarted, “I want you to know that it’s okay to go easy on yourself.” The top half of his sandwich slid off and flopped wetly onto the floor.

Macy sputtered on a glass of orange juice. “Okay, that’s starting  _ real _ strong.”

“Oh, sorry, sorry!” The Duke waved his hands in front of his face apologetically, dropping the other half of his sandwich. He sighed. “I really am sorry, you know. You must have been in a pretty dark place to push yourself this far, and I didn’t notice.”

“How do you figure?”

“Dearie, you don’t commit yourself to exposure therapy at the hands of mysterious, questionably fanatical family members unless you’ve set yourself some unreasonable stakes.”

Macy shrugged. “Not unreasonable for me. I’m an adventurer; I’ve gotta be willing to face this kind of thing. Sure, it left me quivering and briefly unresponsive, but practice makes perfect and all that.”

The duke grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that. This can’t be good for you. It can’t be the right way to go about it. As your father, please, I’m  _ begging _ you to not go so hard.”

“No!” Macy slammed her fists on the table, making the plates rattle and the non-adventurers at the table (her dad and Lisby) flinch. “Listen, I know you don’t get my hip teen ways, Dad, but this is something I need to do for me. If I let myself be anything less than the best hero I can be, that’s fundamentally… irresponsible.”

The Duke began floundering, opening and closing his mouth as he searched for a response that he didn’t know how to form, but then he saw the steady, knowing gaze in Lisby’s eyes and stopped. He nodded toward him, then reached for another sandwich.

“Golly, Macy,” Lisby said in that nasally, high-pitched voice of his, “that sure sounds like a heck of a burden. You must really believe in yourself if you think you can live up to that.”

Her eyes brightened. “Yeah, yeah! See, you get it. You get  _ me.” _

“I get you, too,” Robin pouted.

“Well, that goes without saying.”

“Certainly,” agreed Lisby. “What I wouldn’t do to have a bond with another person as close as the two of you seem to share. So I’m sure you two discussed the events of today well in advance.”

“Right, right.” Macy looked down. “Um, sorta-ish.”

“She told me yesterday,” Robin piped up. “But that’s not really surprising. Between hanging out with Cash Daniels, the Crabapple Crew, and great-uncle Kim’s b-day, I’ve sorta been out a lot the past week.”

Lisby nodded. “So, who  _ did _ you consult before doing this?”

“Huntress Wizard,” Macy replied. “Well. Technically, I asked her about something else, and she told me to confront my fear, and I don’t think this is what she meant.”

“Confronting fear.” Lisby began to pour himself a glass of pungent durian juice. “Not overcome, or surpass? Just confront?”

Macy gave him a thumbs-up.

“Confronting is a complicated action. It implies more nuance than conquer. It’s almost a reaction rather than an action. Confronting an emotion can be as simple as acknowledging its existence; it doesn’t mean its eradication.”

“I mean, maybe, but what about being the best hero I can be?”

“Do you think you’re closer to that after today?”

Macy slumped back in her chair, hand gripping her orange juice like a vice. Robin moved over to hug her, glaring at Lisby with zhir mismatched eyes.

“I don’t mean to discourage you,” he clarified hastily. “Your drive is admirable, and your intentions noble. But you are a candle, burning on both ends. If you keep this up, you’ll burn yourself out.”

“I”m not—!” As Macy shouted, she felt the reverberations of her voice rattle her right leg, exhausted from akathisic twitching, and she cut herself off. “I am,” she admitted. “But… but I…” She could find no predicate.

“But you believe you owe it to the world to fix your flaws,” he offered. “But if you know yourself and do nothing, you’re wasting that knowledge. But if only you can push yourself just that little bit farther, you’ll be of more use to everyone else.” He shook his head, took a sip of durian juice, and grimaced. “Sometimes, things are just imperfect in a way that’s out of your control, and you have to deal with it. In fact, that’s usually the case. Trying to fix something about yourself with desperate measures that amount to elaborate self-flagellation isn’t confronting anything. It’s just a more elaborate form of denial.”

Robin whistled. “Dang, that’s deep, Liz. Where’d you get that knowledge bomb?”

“I have a B.A. in psychology.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Most of the time, like I’m wasting my degree.”

Macy chuckled, a weary smile creeping onto her face for the first time. “Now, I wouldn’t go that far. You’re a pretty integral part of this operation. After all, the whole royal family’s nuts!”

She, Lisby, and the Duke all burst into uproarious laughter at this. Robin laughed nervously alongside them, not sure if zhe was allowed to find this funny. This was better than Macy quivering in the aftershocks of fear, zhe supposed, but still.

Zhe knew this wasn’t the end of the problem, either. Platitudes weren’t going to cut it. Macy was an active person, much more so than Robin could ever really get. She had a nervous energy coursing through her, and she’d need some other outlet for it. Lisby may have identified the cause, but something would still have to be done about the symptom.

“Hey, Macy,” zhe asked just as the laughter started to fade, “why did you want to be able to go to Leaf Man’s house so bad?”

Macy wiped a tear from her face with a sandwich. “Oh, I just wanted to improve my social standing by proving to my classmates that I’m not arachnophobic.”

Robin smirked. “Wanna hear a better idea?”

“Only if it’s convoluted and misguided enough that it could plausibly be the plot to an antebellum sitcom.”

“All my ideas are.”

“Is that… desirable?” asked the Duke, examining his shirt for mustard stains. “Growing up in a castle rather than a Princess Bubblegum-sponsored orphanage has unfortunately left me somewhat ignorant to the pervasive tropes of 21st-century and earlier serialized entertainment.”

Macy leaned back in her chair, tipping it backwards and holding it up by hooking her feet against the underside of the table. “Not even remotely. That’s why it’s fun.”

Lisby sighed. “I suppose that can’t be  _ worse _ than asking Vesper for help.” He took another harsh sip of durian juice. Pouring himself this particular beverage was definitely the second-worst decision that had been made over the course of this snack break.

* * *

Two and a half weeks later, Macy’s historiography class was taking a field trip to the Jugland Museum of Museums. The edifice’s architecture, rough-hewn and ornamental, seemed perfectly displaced from an older time. This was strange, since the building was less than 25 years old, as belied by its holographic doors, sleek roof-mounted bird hangar, and expansive catwalk stretching out past Jugland’s natural walls.

Their teacher, Ms. Metanym, had brought them there under the pretense of looking at their replica of the Candy Kingdom History Museum’s replica of the original gates of Jugland, but after guiding the class to the exhibit, she’d let them wander about aimlessly looking at whatever exhibit they wanted, or more likely ignoring all the exhibits and just using the labyrinthine architecture as a forbidden jungle gym. Macy, not lacking for opportunities to exercise her agility, decided to be a rebel by actually looking at the exhibit her class had come here to check out. Sprightly, lacking that sort of unflinching bravery, stuck next to her awkwardly.

“Hey, check this out, Sprightly,” Macy called, gesturing for her friend to come over and examine a plaque describing a plaque describing a die-cast replica of a giant bronze padlock. “According to this, when the Nut Kingdom mining expedition that first settled the mesa erected the gates to protect themselves from the Mountain Men, very few of them knew how to work with the metal they mined. Although the larger pats of the structure were homemade, they outsourced construction of the gate’s lock to some artisans from the Candy Kingdom.”

“I-is that so?” asked Sprightly, not bothering to look at the plaque.

Macy nodded. “Yeah. They actually ended up settling in the city. One of them even came up with the duchy flag.”

“We have a f-flag?”

“Sure we do, it’s the one with—”

“Nerd!” came a voice from behind her; she turned around to see Astrida, clapping her hands sarcastically. Her normal cronies weren’t in this class, so she had paid off what looked like two tourists to stand behind her menacingly. The effect was actually to make her look more childish and thus less menacing, but she still talked with the measured, vaguely threatening tone of a gang leader. “Seriously,  _ Srta. _ Metanym is the one teacher who actually lets us do whatever, and yet you stay in the same place reading about history most of us already know?”

“Actually,” Ms. Metanym interjected, “the purpose of this exercise is to examine the  _ framing _ of Jugland’s history through a Candy Kingdom perspective, and how that emphasizes and de-emphasizes different parts of that history.”

_ “Demasiadas palabras, profesora.” _

_ “Tá bien.” _ The teacher walked off, looking for other students to elucidate.

Astrida waved off the tourists, who wandered away; she’d made what she thought was her dramatic appearance, so she had no further use for them. “You see, Macy, this is what I meant when I first met you,” she said. “You talk about this history like it’s some  _ gran revalación, _ when for those of us who actually live and breathe with this town, it’s something we all learn as a simple matter of understanding the world we are to inherit. We may be in the Duchy of Nuts, but we’re not just a duchy of nuts, and that is where our strength comes from.”

“H-hey!” Sprightly protested, much to Macy’s surprise (though, she supposed, the rival gang to Astrida’s  _ was _ her coffee supplier). “That’s p-pretty uncalled for. There’s n-no need to remind M-macy that she was a-adopted and thus can n-never truly know what it’s l-like to grow up in this t-town, always feeling like she’s s-stuck on the outside—”

Macy shoved Sprightly over. “Thanks for helping, but please stop helping.”

“Gotcher back,” she moaned weakly from the floor.

“No, you don’t.” Macy cleared her throat. “Trid, you know what? You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in this town. You don’t know what it was like to grow up in an orphanage. Let’s call the whole thing off, eh?” She extended a hand in truce.

Astrida couldn’t refuse the offer without looking like a monster to the complete strangers all around her, so she reached out and shook Macy’s hand. “Don’t call me Trid,” she insisted, “but fine. _Soltaré las burlas un poco si_ _tú,_ ah, if you… um…”

Macy raised an eyebrow. She gripped Astrida’s hand tighter.

The marshmallow blushed as she yanked her hand out of the grip. “I’ll think of what you need to do later,” she insisted. “For now, you —  _ ¡aaaaah!” _ She suddenly froze, recoiling in terror as her eyes drifted up from Macy’s to something lurking above her. Standing on top of the largest piece of the replicated replica gateway was an enormous, twelve-legged spider. Its enormous mouth thingies were flexing or whatever as they dangled right over Macy’s head.

Worst of all, nobody else seemed to be reacting to its presence. It must have had some sort of spider stealth technology that only Astrida’s superior marshmallow senses could penetrate. More than the presence of a giant monster, it was this highly specialized skillset which struck such sheer fear into Astrida’s liver, which was of course where fear was metabolized by the body and turned into panic or courage. Astrida hoped her liver was going to kick in soon, since right now all she had was paralysis.

Macy skilted for a moment, confused by Astrida’s response, then realized what was going on and smirked. “Ah, hold on,” she said; “let me get this.” Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see it, she spun around on one foot, jumping into the air and kicking the spider right in one of its many, many eyes.

Nothing happened, of course, since spiders have eyes to spare. Macy was on the ground, unbalanced from her kick and stunned from the impact of landing, and the spider began to lunge toward her. It closed half the distance in the blink of an eye, then half the remaining distance in a second blink, so on and so forth, but Astrida knew it was only a matter of time before it got her, probably.

She stepped forward and punched the spider in the face. It screamed a spidery wail —  _ that _ seemed to get the attention of the crowd — and then scuttled away, presumably to report its failure to its dark mistress and report on the strength of the Rads and their leader, Astrida Mariana del Río Sangriento Compela y Jiménez.

Then she noticed Macy still lying on the ground, shivering. Despite herself, she knelt down, gently propping the nut up and letting her lean on her shoulder. “Do not worry, I took care of it,” she said. “I’ve, what’s the word, gotcha.”

Macy breathed out deeply. “Whoof, that was unfortunately. I sure hope someone takes care of whatever that was.”

“It was a—”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let’s just… catch up with Ms. Metanym.”

She slowly opened her eyes, but kept leaning against Astrida, as they walked. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any dramatic long-term side effects from this. For now, at least, things seemed to be okay. Still, she should have known better. In her defense, she couldn’t have predicted something  _ exactly _ like that.

A Robin plan was never going to be subtle, but zhir new magic was really starting to go to zhir head. At least it had worked.

* * *

Robin poked zhir head up behind Macy as she sat at her desk, gazing out through that large window that overlooked the Valley of Moths. “You done with your homework for the weekend?” zhe asked.

“Today’s Slimeday,” said Macy. “That question doesn’t make any sense until tomorrow.”

“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how weekends work. You know, because I’m not in school. Because I’m an adult.”

“Aren’t you the same age as me or something?”

“Yeah, but I grew up, like, a hundred times faster.”

Macy shoved aside a pile of papers on her desk. “I’m done enough for now. I doubt I’ll be making any progress on this assignment right now, anyway. Is it time?”

“It is.”

Opening up a sliding drawer in her desk, Macy pulled out a sleek, round-edged cameraphone and flipped it open. “Here goes nothing.” She sat the phone on her desk, propped up against the backboard, and waited.

A beat.

“Are you  _ sure _ it’s—”

The phone suddenly started ringing. Macy freaked out for a second, nearly tipping over in her chair; she caught herself before she collapsed, sitting upright, and then pressed a button on the phone to answer the call. An image appeared on the screen — a closeup of Leaf Man, sitting on a wooden couch set against a dirt wall hung with landscapes of overgrown greenhouses.

“Hello!” said Macy, waving her hand. “It’s good to see you, uh, Grod, I forgot your name.”

Leaf Man nodded, then realized he was expected to speak. “Good to see the top of your head.”

“Oh.” Macy adjusted the position of the camera. “That better?”

Thumbs-up.

“Anyway, thanks for arranging this. It’s so much easier than meeting in person.”

“Thank Robin.”

“Hardly. I feel like I give zhir too much positive reinforcement as it is; zhe’ll spoil at this rate.”

“Hey!” Robin protested. “I mean, fair, but still, rude. You’re such a teenager.”

“So this is my house,” said Leaf Man. The view jittered as he picked up the camera and began slowly panning it across the room, showing off the natural furniture and eclectic decorations — bark stools and stone tables alongside highly detailed naturepunk artwork. “It’s the place I get to come back to because you saved me from that weird jerk.”

Macy clucked. “That’s what I do. I gotta say, I’m diggin’ the aesthetic. Sorta reminds me of HW’s treehouse, but with less meat and more, uh, I dunno, what do you call that artstyle?”

Leaf Man turned to look at a piece of art sitting on a table behind him, then looked back into the camera. “It’s a painting.”

“That’s the word I was looking for.”

He nodded. “Hey, wanna say hi to my dog?”

“Bro. Bro. Listen. Of  _ course _ I wanna say hi to your dog.” Seated on top of her desk, Robin was furiously gesturing at Macy to stop, but she waved zhir off. “If I ever turn down an opportunity to say hi to your dog, you can safely assume that I’ve been replaced with an evil double from an alternate timeline where everything is backwards.”

“Alright.” He clapped his hands. “C’mere, Vriska. Say hi to our guest.”

At the mention of the name, Macy’s blood ran cold, though she had no idea why. Vriska was certainly an unusual name for a dog, but what of it? Oh, poor girl.

After some more camera rustling, the view focused on a small parchment door-flap, through which stepped a familiar, large spider, baring its fangs excitedly. “There you are, girl,” cooed Leaf Man. “Smile for the camera.”

Macy did not hear this. Before he reached the second sentence, she’d folded up her phone and chucked it full-force through the closed window, breaking the glass as it began its parabolic descent into the forest far, far below.

Robin stretched zhir head through the hole to examine its fall, then turned back to Macy. “So I guess that’s gonna be a thing now, huh?” zhe asked. Macy didn’t respond, her eyes wide and vacant, so Robin grew worried. “Macy?” zhe prompted, shining zhir horn into her eye. “You okay?”

She reached out and clasped her hand around Robin’s horn, snuffing out the light. “I get it now.”

“You get what? The root of your phobia? What you should have said to Masse? Five dollars off at the gyro place?”

“No, my homework.” She reached over and moved the large stack of papers back into the middle of her desk. “It’s a  _ parabola. _ I think I know how to continue now.”

Robin sighed in relief. “All’s well that ends well, then.”

“There is a hole in my window.”

“Technicalities.”

* * *

A line of fire ants was proceeding through the windy desert afternoon. Their numbers, once strong, were now diminished by the protection of Vriska the spider as she defended the bush where the ants often scouted. Their returning line was thus sparse and spotty, and several ants were carrying fallen comrades they had managed to recover. Ideally, they wouldn’t have to brave such a dangerous adversary in their search for sustenance. Alas, these desperate times made fools of them.

The return to their nest was equally treacherous. The desert had many predators, and the starving forest edge where they had set up shop even more. The fire ants were fearsome in number, but they had their limits. The dotted line carved a wide berth around coyote warrens, frequented highways, and the widdle warring armies of the Cuties and Fairies.

The shadows of the wispy treeline were just beginning to stretch in earnest anticipation of twilight when the ants reached them. Carefully, and with unwavering order, they trailed through to the mounts where they had dug out their warren. They entered, carrying their scraps and their fallen alike, to be deposited in each of their respective places — the food stores, and the cemetery.

One ant, though, broke off when it reached home base. It traveled a bit farther, to a tree that had been stripped clean of bark. As it ascended, it passed a swarming wasp’s nest, a larva-covered leaf, and even a reclining mantis. Normally, it would either attempt to war these other insects, or prepare to be warred upon. Now, though, it ignored them, and not just because it was alone. They were all in this situation together, like it or not.

At last it reached a large, artificial branch that had been attached to the top of the tree. From here, it had a vantage of the whole of this small glade, which was of course the point. Not for its benefit, though, and it didn’t care. It crawled forward, advancing to the end of the branch, until it stopped at the feet of the person standing there, waiting until she turned her attention toward it. After a few minutes, it did.

“Well, then, my little spy,” cooed Bandit Princess, kneeling down to get her face close to the ant. “Tell me what you’ve learned this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a quick peek behind the curtain with regards to the end of the chapter.
> 
> This episode concept — Macy trying to visit Leaf Man's house after saving him but being scared off by bugs, doing wacky hijinks in a failed attempt to get over her fear, and then doing a video call only for that to _still_ trigger her entomophobia — was something I've had in mind for a long time. The ending, where it's revealed that some of the bugs are Bandit Princess's spies, was a more recent addition. I cannot for the life of me remember whether I added that because of the idea to give Bandit Princess a bug army in the previous season finale, or if I inserted that earlier scene as a setup for this. I swear to GOLB.
> 
> But enough about bugs, let's talk about classmates. I mentioned a lot of Macy's classmates this chapter, and that's a deliberate choice — the first chapter after the _first_ eight-parter was the one where we introduced Macy's school as a concept. Strictly speaking, only Nom is a new classmate; like Barb, Lemonade 2, and Donut Witch from the Crabapple Crew, I threw him in to add credence to the idea that it's been about nine or ten months (I haven't checked the official TL since my computer borked) in-universe since “Catbells”. The other seemingly-new character, Flynn, was mentioned in that chapter as the person who gave Macy a notebook. I'd mentioned that back then to avoid the implication that Macy had exactly one school friend. Instead, she started with exactly two school friends, which is much better.
> 
> But yeah, this really is callback city, huh? Between this and the next chapter, a lot of events from Season 1 are brought up. I stand by the assertion that you can understand this season without having read the last; it just means there will be a lot of noodle incidents. The biggest one in terms of amount of text devoted to it has to be the extended pseudo-flashback interrupting the scene with Vesper, which was actually not something I knew I was oging to write until I started to write this chapter — I had a vague idea going in about Macy asking Vesper to help, but it wasn't until that was imminent that I figured out what would happen as a result. I like how it turned out, and I'll almost certainly revisit the general motif of corrupted flashbacks in the future (in fact, I know a few specific points I might do it), but I don't know if I'll go back to that exact scene again, at least until Macy and Masse's relationship has settled into something more definite than the limbo it currently exists in.
> 
> I should probably acknowledge Vriska, huh?
> 
> Once again, the discussion question is: What's some advice that you've given, or been given, that's helped you, or someone else, out? My answer, in direct defiance of Robin's actions this chapter, is: “If a course of action can reasonably be described as ‘wacky sitcom hijinks’, you probably shouldn't go through with it.” If I had a nickel blah blah blah weird that it happened twice.
> 
> And now, a sneak peek at the Half Past Adventure Christmas not-special, coming soon to an archive near you:  
> “You have an ordinary ukulele.”


	11. Brewing Pitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin schemes to use zhir newfound wizard powers to prank Pen hardcore.
> 
> Chapter 29 overall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've got some bad news. I have basically no buffer, and there's a reason for that. I've been genuinely falling behind, for a number of reasons I don't want to go into. The gist of that is I'm not sure if I'll have an update ready three weeks from now. I may slow down for the near future, and I'm not sure how much or for how long. I merely ask that, should that be the case, you be patient and understanding. I haven't lost my passion for the story, I'm just going through a period where it's harder for me to act on that for a variety of reasons. Thank you.
> 
> The discussion prompt is: What would you like to see a bonus story about, concerning this universe?

It was a bright and sunny day in the month of Lenoir. The mountain jays were singing their harmonious mating calls, the wind chimes in the Castle Jugland gardens were dingling, and Robin V was up to no good. In other words, it was Twosday.

Today, Robin’s particular brand of mischief took the form of shapeshifting into a jay, recoloring zhir fur to match, and hiding out in a tree over the garden bench waiting to scare the next unsuspecting person who sat there. What would zhe do when they did? Jump out and startle them? Steal their wallet? Maybe poop on them? Zhe liked to play these things by ear. If zhe didn’t know what zhe was going to do, there was no way anyone else would.

Ah, here came zhir true target: Penhaligon Jugland, reading a book whose cover zhe couldn’t make out as he walked. Perfect. Zhe watched patiently as he approached the bench, tensed up in preparation for pouncing, and—

“Hello, Robin,” said Pen. Robin twitched in startlement, losing zhir form and crashing through the tree, painfully snapping several branches and  _ maybe _ an unimportant bone or two on the way down (zhe’d have to buy some more).

“Gah!” zhe exclaimed as zhe returned to zhir natural form, curling up around the tree like an extremely thick vine. “How’d you know I was there?”

“I didn’t,” he replied, not looking away from his book. “I’ve just been saying that every time I walk into a room all day. Pete said he didn’t see you rappelling down the side of the cliffside wall after Macy left for school, so I figured you were gonna pull something like this. Face it, Robin, you’re never gonna get one over on me.”

“That’s what you think,” Robin snapped. “You may be smarter than me, savvier than me, and more of a morning person than me, but I’ll have you know, I’m an expert at, uh…” Zhe trailed off.

“Sautéeing,” Pen offered. “Ukulele. Trespassing into people’s unconscious minds through the field of dreams.”

“Stop saying random words; you’re distracting me from trying to think of things I’m good at.”

“That’s what I was doing.”

Robin blew a raspberry and slinked off the tree. “Please, you’re no good at the ukulele. The one time I let you handle mine, I had to spend the next three hours retuning it, and that doesn’t even make sense.”

Pen closed up his book and tucked it in his breast pocket. He didn’t bother to earmark the page; he always simply memorized the page number, like a freak. “Robin, sometimes I feel like you’re going easy on me. Our enmity is certainly thrilling, and don’t get me wrong, I really do hate you, but you’re just not challenging me at this point, and I know you can.”

Zhe narrowed zhir eyes. “What are you saying, Hal?”

Though he was facing away from zhir, zhe could still tell his eye twitched at the nickname. “What I’m saying,  _ Bean, _ is that our relationship is growing… stale. I’m not trying to be mean, and I do like what we had. I’m just doing what I always do: Telling the truth.”

Robin was stung. “I’m not stung or anything, but I do have a suggestion.”

“Yes?”

Zhe blew him a raspberry. “Try being less of a jerk.”

“You’d know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?”

“Being less of a jerk? Yes, thanks for noticing.”

He sighed, turning around and standing up on the bench so he could look at Robin directly. “I’m serious. I’m  _ always _ serious. I know you better than you think, and I know when you’re directing your attention elsewhere. If you’ve found someone you hate more in your little wizard’s club, I get it, but I want to know that. You know how I feel about being jerked around.”

“Don’t fret about it. I’m just getting used to the new rhythm, ya dig?” Zhe magically conjured a mischievous gleam in zhir corundum eyes. “I’m gonna spark up our rivalry right good again, and when I do, I’ll get you so good you’ll redefine the meaning of hate.”

Pen chuckled. “In your dreams.”

“So we’re still on for meeting in our dreams tonight?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.”

* * *

Robin paced back and forth across Macy’s room in zhir indoor form. Macy sat on the bed, restringing her bow, eyes tracking Robin’s path. “You good, friendo?” she asked absently.

“I dunno. It’s Pen. I—”

“Stop.” Macy set her bow down, hopped off her bed, and placed a hand on Robin’s shoulder, arresting zhir in zhir tracks. “Do not, under any circumstances — now or ever — come to me about relationship advice involving my older brother.”

“Oops.” Zhe slunk away.

* * *

Robin paced back and forth in the noisy, cheese-scented bowling alley. Jeff the Karuka, bedazzled in a multitude of belts, sat twiddling his thumbs on a plastic bench, while Cash Daniels was stepping up to bowl the third frame. Cash released the balloon, which immediately went into the gutter; she turned around, wincing, to face Robin. “You mind cutting that out, friendo?” she asked. “Your pacing is throwing me off my patter.”

“Your patter?” Robin tilted zhir head.

“Her patter,” confirmed Jeff.

“Your patter don’t matter.”

Cash gasped in fake shock. “Such venom! Lo, I am sad.”

“That shot was sadder.”

“True. I just hope my next one is, uh…”

“Not badder,” Jeff suggested.

“That, yeah.” She walked over to the ball machine and picked up a ball, testing its weight. “Just don’t pace, okay?” She started to walk toward the lane.

“Sure, I’ll pipe down. I’ve just got a lot of energy to work out, since—”

“And don’t chatter.”

Robin went mum. Cash rolled the ball, which sailed straight down the lane, right into the center of the pin triangle, before sharply swerving at the last second and bouncing against the gutter. It rebounded against the back wall of the lane, jumped over the pins, and then careened up the lane once more until it slammed into Cash’s knees and knocked her down. It continued sailing through the air, right toward Jeff, who reached out a hand and caught it effortlessly.

“Well,” said Cash, slowly getting up and rubbing her head as Jeff carried the ball forward to bowl his frame, “that wasn’t my strongest performance. Sorry, what were you about to say, Robin?”

“I dunno. It’s Pen. I feel like our relationship’s hitting a bit of a rough patch, and I really want to make it work. I’ve never had a relationship like this, so I suppose I’m asking for a lot, but I just don’t want it to fall apart after just a year, you know?”

“Hm.” She stumbled over to the plastic bench and, very carefully, flopped down carelessly. “When you say a rough patch, what do you mean, specifically?”

Zhe explained what zhe meant.

“Oof, that’s not good. A healthy kismesissitude needs a foundation of respect and equal footing, and it seems like Pen is absolutely, completely, utterly thrashing you in every regard. He’s just so much better than you in every way you compete that you can’t possibly hope to compare to him, so it’s utterly unengaging from him to participate in a hollow competition with you that he’s guaranteed to win.”

“I know, right?” Robin looked up at the scoreboard. Jeff, for some reason, had not yet bowled a single ball the whole time they’d been talking. “You’ve got a kismesis. How do you keep it fresh, despite the fact that you’ve never, ever, ever managed to catch her, ever?”

Cash chuckled, then clutched her head. “Ow. Well, first of all, I have. Good ol’ Penelope Farthing. I was actually the first person to connect her identity to her crimes, did I ever tell you that? Before, she was just known as ‘The Rainicorn’, since she’d always leave a calling card that looked like one in advance of her crime — one of those holographic cards where the image looks 3D. I’ve got a few in my office desk if you wanna see ‘em. Heh, the Banana Guards were convinced she was an actual rainicorn, which I think was the point. When she went to steal the Sugar Cube, PB had her knights Finn and Jake providing extra security on all the sky-based entrances a real rainicorn might use, but I realized the game and caught her sneaking in through a back entrance after her human assistant Izak had nerfed the security cameras right under the knights’ noses.

“‘Course, we didn’t catch Izak, and he broke her out of custody before she could stand trial, but that sorta set the tone for our relationship. She typically gets away from me, and I’m usually not even near enough to her thefts to catch her, but I always do keep her on the run. Whenever she gets the advantage over me, I find a way to turn the tables, either beating her at her own game or changing the rules after she rigs ‘em.”

Robin nodded. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. How is this applicable to me, exactly?”

Cash thought about that for a solid five, maybe ten seconds. “If you want to hold Pen’s interest, you need to hit him where it hurts. Isolate what he’s doing that embodies what you hate about him, and counter him there. A deep rivalry can only exist when both members care not just about each other but about the thing they’re rivals in. What’s Pen care about?”

Zhe pondered this. “Um, magic, cooking, dream analysis…”

Cash shook her head. “Robin, those are things  _ you _ care about. What does  _ Pen _ care about?”

Zhe closed zhir eyes, trying desperately to do the impossible and see the world through the eyes of someone else (zhe could barely see through zhir  _ own _ eyes). What had made Pen mad about zhir in the past? What was at the core of his being?

As soon as zhe realized the answer, zhir eyelids flew open, temporarily blinding zhir with the influx of harsh neon light. Zhe rubbed zhir eyes. “Politics!” zhe exclaimed. A beat. “Oh, hell, it’s politics.”

Slowly, Cash sat up. “Well, it’s a start anyway. Hey,” she added, “why isn’t it your turn to bowl yet?”

Sure enough, when Robin looked up at the scoreboard, Jeff’s frame was still empty. “Hey, what gives?” zhe barked.

Jeff turned back to Cash and Robin, eyes vacant. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “I was just sorta listening to you the whole time. Dang, I hope things work out for you and your man.”

Robin conjured googly-eyes in front of zhir real ones and made them roll. “That’s personal, Jeff, glob.” Zhe didn’t want to get other people involved in zhir hate life. Zhe had been reluctant enough to involve Cash, only doing so because zhe knew she had been experienced in the subject. Anyway, now that zhe’d gotten Cash’s advice, zhe knew exactly whom zhe needed to get involved in zhir hate life.

* * *

Pen stepped out of the passenger seat of his car in a parallel parking spot in the town square, directly across from a fountain housing a very much not commissioned statue of him and the rest of the royal family. He found the display garish, and had been secretly delighted when several months ago someone had vandalized it with colorful graffiti (the culprit had never been caught). Now, unfortunately, it had long since been refurbished, and wholly unnecessary security cameras placed all around the square. The whole thing was a bit too… Princess Bubblegum for his tastes.

He looked up at the building before him — one which had been rebuilt many times, but whose façade still resembled its origin as the first brick-and-mortar town hall of Jugland, from back before its proper incorporation as a township of the Duchy of Nuts (which it later left, of course). He always did this any time he stepped out of a vehicle, just in case he had accidentally arrived at the wrong location. Briefly, he spared a glance for a large clock atop a nearby church (he was right on time, thank glob). Then he turned back to the cashew in the driver’s seat and tipped his long black toupée like a cap. “Thanks for the ride, Lisby,” he said.

“Sure thing, boss-man!” Lisby replied. “You want I should pick you back up before dinner?”

“Nah, I’ll walk back.”

“But won’t that take you through the bad part of town? You know…” Then, lower, “the  _ tourism _ district?”

“The heart-pounding anxiety should be good for my low blood pressure.” He made a small, salute-like gesture with two fingers near his brow, and Lisby sped off, driving like a lead-footed human in a hurry.

As he walked into the beginning and began ascending the stairs toward his appointment, he withdrew a small packet of papers from his breast pocket and began reviewing them. Trewin Carpine, beech nut, longtime friend and business partner of the Jugland estate. Got his education in the Candy Kingdom, but Pen could overlook that. Seeking a renewed contract with the estate, in the light of the ever-evolving financial situation of the duchy.

Pen’s job was to make sure this contract was favorable, and most importantly, that it didn’t include any terms that would require disclosure to Icy U on account of their active presence in the estate-owned section of the mines (mostly the stripped-out upper layers, where they oversaw the tourism industry, though as a nice bonus all the other sections had to pass through there). As evinced by the fact that Pen was the reason they owned that section of the mines in the first place, he was pretty good at netting favorable contracts. This would be a piece of—

He opened the door to the office room he was headed for, only to see Robin sitting across a rickety birchwood desk from Trewin, laughing jovially. “Ah, what did I tell you?” zhe said, flicking zhir eyes and tail toward Pen as he walked in. “Right on time, and not a moment later. Nor sooner.”

“What. Are. You. Doing.”

“Contract negotiations. Duh.”

“You don’t speak for the Jugland estate.” He slammed his hands on Trewin’s desk, staring at him with pleading fervor. “Listen, zhe doesn’t speak for the Jugland estate.”

Trewin scooted his chair backward, eyes wide. “Uh, that’s — I know, Pen, that’s not the contract we were negotiating.”

“Union membership,” said Robin. Pen whipped his head around and fixed zhir with a sharp gaze, but zhe didn’t flinch. “He’s going to petition his workplace to join the tradesworker’s union. His status as the accountant personally sought after by the Duke’s household makes him somewhat of an accounting celebrity, so he’s got a good chance of makin’ it wakin’.”

“Wha— Robin, since when are you a representative of a union?”

Zhe shrugged. “I’m not, not really, but I’ve sold enough weird herbs to enough apothecaries that I’m basically an insider anyway.”

Pen sighed in exasperation, then shoved Robin off the chair and took a seat there. “Okay, well, I can work with this. Trewin, can we get down to business?”

“Uh,” he said nervously, “I mean, yes, of course, but you should know that I’m not going to… to… to agree to anything that isn’t, you know…” he trailed off.

Robin formed into a pillar beneath Pen’s chair, slamming him into the ceiling, before finishing Trewin’s thought. “They’re gonna adhere to the standards of the guild, which includes sharing non-patented, non-personal, and non-confidential information with all other members.”

“What‽” Pen shoved himself off the chair and landed on one knee on the ground below. Standing up, he dusted himself off. “That’ll make our financial records available to Icy U, an entity under the direct control of a foreign power. You’re selling us out, Robin!”

Zhe tsked, by which I mean she made a paralinguistic alveolar click sound that only barely resembles ‘tsk’. “I’m decentralizing. Aren’t you for that? Isn’t that the reason you don’t trust Princess Bubblegum or Icy U?”

“Yes, but — argh, forget it.” He slumped backward; Robin followed suit, sending the chair crashing down behind zhir. Trewin cringed. “What’s even happening?” Pen asked, not sure to whom the question was directed.

“It’s simple,” replied Robin. “I’m winning.” With that, zhe stood up, started walking out of the room, and stepped on a leg of the chair, causing it to spring upward and smack zhir in the face. “Still winning,” zhe insisted as zhe staggered out.

As Pen sat there on the floor, barely taking in the world around him, Trewin stood up and walked over to the chair. He righted it, then hoisted Pen by the shoulders and sat him down in it, before returning to his own seat. “Well, then, with that out of the way, should we get into the rest of the negotiations?”

“I’m gonna have to walk home,” Pen rasped. “This humiliating loss, and afterwards I have to walk.”

“Well, that’ll be good for your blood pressure, right?” He cleared his throat. “Now, let’s talk hazard pay…”

* * *

Pen stood, wrapped in several layers of winterwear, on a snow-covered peak on the far side of the Sienna Ridge. If he turned his head over his shoulder, he could vaguely see the Gates of Jugland, and the road leading out from them past this ridge and on to the north. His car was parked in a lot for a moderately unpopular ski resort, but he had trekked a quarter of a mile up past the highest point the resort’s funicular lift reached. Up here, strong winds blew up the face of the mountain, through the cold, thin air, forming a wispy fog out of what moisture remained in the air.

He knew where to look, though. Out of the north he saw a dark shape in the distance, growing larger. As it approached, its form clarified, even though the clouds — first a speck, then a line, and eventually a telltale flapping V. With a great caw, it swooped down, and he could see it clearly: a great red roc, wingspan the size of a large gyro shop. Its crimson feathers, set against the relative dullness of the hazy mountain, burned like a second sun.

It rolled over, and a smaller figure — a peanut wearing a sturdy green dress, riding boots, and  _ enormous _ goggles — fell off its back and began careening through the air, whistling in excitement. Colla Jugland was on a collision course for the Sienna Ridge, and she was having the time of her life.

Just as Pen began to fear that his wife might have forgotten to survive, she clapped her hands, and her dress ballooned up and flew off her legs, revealing a padded bodysuit beneath; the straps of the dress hooked into a harness, and the body formed a parachute, letting her slow down just enough that when she impacted about fifty meters up-mountain of Pen, it only sent up a  _ sizeable _ plume of snow instead of  _ massive _ one.

Without missing a Beat, Pen ran upwards, ignoring the shuddering cold as his boots sank deep into dry, unpacked snow. When the dust settled, he reached his hand down into the anthropomorphic-peanut-shaped hole in the snow, clasped Colla’s hand, and pulled her out, giving her a moment to catch her breath before he started talking to her.

“Hello, my starling,” he crooned. “It’s been a bit of time.”

Colla laughed as she pressed a button on her goggles, activating little wipers to scrape off snow and frost. “Same to you, my dashing bluebird,” she replied in a countermelody. “I’m feeling rather fine!”

“Good to hear it. I take it your research has been going well.”

“Actually, that was a lie. It’s absolutely, completely awful. I just wanted to finish the rhyme.” Glancing back at the disappearing silhouette of the roc that had carried her here, she held down her thumb in its general direction. “Dang thing just won’t behave.”

“That’s what you’ve been studying? It’s a bit bigger than what you usually focus on, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, that’s Henry. He’s my ride. He’s just constantly late, is all.”

“Right.” He took her arm in his and began walking back toward his car, her following alongside. “What were you researching again? Something about migration patterns and magnetic fields?”

“Yeah, but it’s been hard to get consistent data this year. Lots of minor ecological disturbances, but they’re adding up to just too much statistical noise to make any sort of conclusion, other than ‘there’s a lot of noise, y’all.’” She sighed, a thin wisp of breath congealing in the thin wispy fog. “I guess Colla Posy won’t be publishing her seminal work this year, either.”

“Penhaligon Jugland wonders why Colla Posy is talking in the third person.”

She elbowed him in the ear. “That’s because Colla Jugland is talking about her professional name.”

“Right, right, her dashing bluebird knows.”

She laughed at that. “If I’d known we were going to be comparing each other to birds as, like, a  _ thing, _ I’d have picked a better bird for you. Maybe something territorial, like a hawk.”

He opened his mouth to object, considered this, then nodded in agreement. “I’ll take that as a compliment, especially considering how yesterday went.”

“Yesterday?”

He explained what happened with the accountant for the remainder of the trip to the funicular.

“That’s… not  _ so _ bad,” she said cautiously as she stepped into the funicular car. “It’s not like you’re losing any control to Icy U, just some visibility.”

“I guess,” he agreed, taking his seat, glad for the car’s relative warmth compared to the air outside as it spread over his shell like a blanket. “I’m not happy about that either, don’t get me wrong, but I think what’s really sticking with me is that Robin of all people pulled one over on me.”

“Oh?” Colla took off her goggles and tucked them into a backpack she’d folded out of her dress/parachute. “That’s quite a lack of respect, for that to surprise you so. Surely that can’t be the case if your rivalry is as true as I am to believe.”

“What — no — I—” He turned his head away, hiding his face behind a veil of false black hair. “I just, uh… It’s personal.”

“I’m your wife. If you can’t tell me personal things, you can’t tell them to anyone.”

“No, I mean zhir victory. It was in the area where I thought I was untouchable — I mean, a realm where I didn’t expect zhir to try to compete. How was I supposed to even guess zhe had the attention span for that‽”

Colla brushed the hair out of Pen’s face and placed her finger on his nose. “Well, it sounds like your next course of action should be obvious.”

“How so?”

“Zhe beat you in your area of expertise. Now you need to beat zhir in… zhirs? Is that the right pronoun form?”

“Yeah. But, wait, do you mean magically?”

“That, or cooking.”

Pen shuddered. “Never again. Magic it is, then. But, hold on, I did that last year. The thing with the ghosts.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

At that, Pen smiled. “Well, if it ain’t broke…”

* * *

“…don’t fix it,” said Macy, setting up an archery target in the castle’s side lawn. “It’s as easy as that.”

Captain of the Nut Guard Amélie Faucher, who was standing off to the side half-pretending not to be seeking advice from her youngest charge, coughed nervously. “I don’t know that I can agree with that, Marquess,” she confessed. “You know Robin better than I, but Pen and I go back. When last I saw him, he looked… intense.”

Macy looked up from where she had been measuring the angle of the target using a crude, hand-carved wooden protractor. “You’re worrying over nothing. I talked to Colla, and she says everything’s fine.”

“I’ve known Pen longer than she has. Trust me, he’s up to something.”

“Sounds exciting.” Satisfied that the target was straight enough, Macy began walking over to grab a standing quiver from where she’d rested it by the side wall. In truth, the target was pretty off, but Macy had been too close to notice, and Mél didn’t know what it was supposed to look like enough to realize.

“That’s what I’m worried about. The last thing we need right now is more excitement.”

“You saying you’re gonna get into the middle of all this to try and defuse it?”

“I’d rather you did it, since they both trust you more, but if I have to? Absolutely.”

“That’s pretty nosy. Are you sure you don’t have an interior motive?”

A third voice spoke up. “If she did, she wouldn’t tell you,” said Vesper, stepping out of the shadows to hand Macy the quiver. “That’s how  _ ulterior _ motives work.”

“Dang,” Macy said as she took the quiver. “I’ve been getting so good at pronounciating, too.”

Mél gave Vesper the stink-eye. “Speaking of nosy, what are you doing inserting yourself into this conversation? I know that’s your thing, but I didn’t think this kind of romantic drama interested you at all.”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” Vesper assured her, “but there’s nothing wrong or suspicious about keeping up with my family, is there?”

Macy set down the quiver, crossed her arms, and fixed Vesper with a level stare (or the closest approximation aimed at someone who always has their face hidden). “You’ve gotten roped into it, too, haven’t you?”

A hidden smile grew on their face, loud enough to be seen through the concealing white cloak. “I may have been given another opportunity to use my unique skillset, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Cool, cool.” Macy turned to look at Mél. “Hey, could you tell my father that I’m staying at Sprightly’s? I’m gonna see if she can have an extended sleepover for the next month or so, for no particulate reason.”

“What?” Mél shook her head rapidly. “No, I can’t—”

But Macy was already gone, vaulting over the castle gate while shouting, “I meant particular!”

* * *

The chapel in Castle Jugland was a beautiful, spacious room, with a sense of style that clashed with the rest of the castle and belied its nature as the only part of the edifice never to have undergone the slighted structural modification. Rows of pews, burnished mahogany with red velvet seats, framed the central aisle leading to a corroded metal pulpit. Behind it stood an altar bearing a visage of Grob Gob Glob Grod, shimmering so freshly polished it stood out as anomalous. Off to the side, a keyboard was connected to church organ pipes woven through the whole foundation; a black tarp was laid over it, a “Do Not Touch” placard placed over it, and Robin’s name scribbled on the placard to make it clear exactly whom the message was directed at.

Most impressive by far, though, was the massive triptych proudly displayed in the chapel’s balcony. As betrayed by a calligraphic signature in the corner, this was a work of the legendary Cilantro, a painter from the Garden Kingdom with a famously mixed reception. This mural, entitled “Scenes from the First Circumscription of the Globe”, consisted of three panels dominated by different types of colored shapes and squiggles arranged in an interlocking mosaic. It was said to represent how the Earth looked from Glob’s perspective, from where he orbited it after his and his brothers’ death. To Robin, though, it was just a bunch of shapes and squiggles.

“You’re looking at it wrong.”

Vesper’s voice so startled Robin that zhe lost zhir composure; stretched from the front of the aisle up to the balcony, she immediately fell over backwards, landing in one of the pews. Zhe shapeshifted one of zhir paws to fan zhirself as zhe sat up, looking around a bit before fixing zhir eyes on Vesper near zhir feet. “How am I supposed to look at it, then?” zhe asked.

“From farther away.” As if to demonstrate, they took a step backward and held their hands in front of their face, making a rectangle with their thumbs and forefingers. “It’s not the shapes that tell the story, it’s the shapes the shapes make.”

Robin blew a raspberry. “Listen, Mx. I-have-innate-color-vision, I’ve got one eye that can see red, one that can see blue, and a horn that can see every color at once. I’m not gonna see the same thing y’all do.”

“That really shouldn’t matter for a Cilantro. As a shapist, they focus more on the geometry of the art, with color playing a supplemental role if anything. This piece in particular is—”

“—a priceless masterpiece of post-impressionist shapism which brilliantly blends Vectorian geometric determinism with traditional Martian eschatological iconography,” Robin finished, waving zhir foot in circles in front of Vesper’s face. “I’ve heard your spiel before, art nerd.”

“I’m not an art nerd, I’m a religion nerd. Art just happens to play a large role in the conveyance of many religious ideas, since by their nature they tend to transcend that which can be literally described losslessly.”

“You’re not a religion nerd, you’re an occultist.”

They held out a hand and wavered it from side to side. “Same thing, really. But you’re neither, so what could you be doing here of all places?”

“I dunno. Maybe I had a religious experience at the bottom of the ocean and decided to start exploring—”

“Nope.”

“—yeah, I didn’t figure you’d buy that.” Zhe squished back into zhir indoor form, keeping zhir feet planted so that zhe wound up sitting at the edge of a pew next to Vesper. “Really, I just wanted to get a look at that painting up there. I figured that maybe with my newly binocular vision, I might be able to understand it better. Turns out it just hurts my brain in two different colors at once.”

Vesper nodded in understanding, then turned to leave, their white robe swishing dramatically behind them. When they were near the end of the aisle, Robin began slowly stretching and spiraling zhir way back up to the balcony, zhir horn drawing a subtle amount of saturation from zhir pastel stripes. Quietly, zhe tapped zhir horn to the triptych, releasing a faint pulse of light that began to ripple out across the surface.

Immediately, a wave of shadow came from the edges, neutralizing the light before coalescing at zhir horn and sending zhir toppling backwards once more. This time, zhe fell along the aisle, zhir face planting right next to Vesper as they stood their nonchalantly. “Aw, man,” zhe moaned, looking up at Vesper, zhir horn sputtering. “What was that?”

They shrugged. “I haven’t a shadow of a clue. Perhaps someone wanted to remind you that, even with your newfound congress among wizards, you’re in no position to judge the artistic merit of a religious painting. But what do I know?”

“Yeah, what  _ do _ you know?” Zhe narrowed zhir eyes. “I see what’s going on here. I know who you’re working for.”

“Oh?”

“Mél! It’s gotta be. She’s the most religious person I know; she  _ would _ try and protect the integrity of that three-panel array of colorful nonsense.”

“Uh, hehe. I’m not working for anyone, not that I’d tell you if I was. I’m eccentric like that.” They walked away, not to the door of the temple but to a shadowed corner near it. “Do take care, Robin.”

Once they’d melded into the shadow, Robin smirked.  _ Pen’s probably stupid enough to think I’m stupid enough to believe that. _ Now the metaphorical ball was in zhir court, and if there was one thing Robin was good at, it was metaphors.

* * *

Robin did not get zhir revenge right away. Instead, the next couple of weeks were characterized by a slow build of tension between the two. At breakfast, they would race each other to the  _ pommes frites _ platter. In the evenings, they would trade off opening and shutting the curtains in the parlor, neither relenting to move to another room. When Galé suggested the family all go out to a movie, each suggested one in a genre the other would hate. It was the kind of immature, passive-aggressive bickering that only happens when someone rubs someone the wrong way in exactly the right way.

All the while, Robin was plotting. Zhe knew zhe’d need to score a decisive victory over Pen in order to halt the escalation without conceding, which meant zhe’d need to beat him both in his area of expertise and zhir own. Politics was right out, since zhe didn’t want to entrench zhirself in that field too hard. Rhetoric might be an option, but it’d be difficult for zhir to pull that off without serious cheating. Science? No, with his wife at his side, he’d be invincible. Zhe’d need to uncover some dusty mineshaft of his, a center of passion that he was out of practice in but which was still near and dear to his heart.

Zhe found zhir answer one Threesday afternoon as Pen was reviewing horticultural plans for the castle grounds that upcoming spring. He was walking along the side yard, between the archery range and the perimeter hedges, examining the flowering plants and bushes, when he saw something that made him stop. There was a rather tall weed poking out between two budding bushes, threatening to crowd them both out. He reached his hand into a concealed pouch on his back and pulled out a smallish, green-tipped lance, using the weapon as a makeshift trowel to leverage under the weed and uproot it.

Zhe’d already known he had this weapon, but until now, zhe hadn’t stopped to consider  _ why _ he had it. With what zhe knew of him, though, zhe could hazard a guess. With that guess came a plan. There would be other things to nail down before zhe could put it into motion, but for now zhe had something to work with.

Zhe stretched out a paw, yoinked the weed away before he could pick it up, and ate it, cringing at the bitter taste of dirt.  _ Why did I do that? _

* * *

Abracadaniel was sitting in the library at Icy University, face buried in a textbook on rudimentary color theory. He paused to check his watch again. Still a few more minutes until Simon was to meet him, though he suspected it would be a bit longer; Simon’s classes had a tendency to run a bit late. He returned to burying his face in the book. If he had to wait much longer, he might have to start  _ reading _ it.

He was distracted by a heavily distorted guitar riff coming from his hip pocket. For a moment, he thought a portal to the rock dimension might have opened up in his abdomen again, until he remembered that was just his ringtone. He pulled out his phone and answered it without looking at the number, for he liked to live life on the edge. “Yellow? This is Abracadaniel, representing Abracadaniel. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

The voice on the other end spoke.

“Ah, right, yes, the new kid. What’s this about, then?”

More speech, quieter, like zhe didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“Oh, interesting.” He set down the book and pondered for a moment. “I think I do, actually. Want me to text it to you?”

A beat.

“Wait, how are you talking to me if you don’t have a phone?”

Zhir response was matter-of-fact, as if it wasn’t a totally banyaners thing to say.

“You should probably give it back before you’re convicted for high treason or war crimes or something. Can I send it over prismgram? Is that a thing that’s possible?”

A very exasperated response, as if Abracadaniel’s line  _ was _ banyaners.

“Okay, just be careful with it, I wouldn’t want you to — yes, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. See you at the next club meeting then.”

He snapped the phone shut, then picked the color theory book back up. Obviously he wasn’t sure Robin knew what zhe was doing, and he might be being an enabler right now, but that was what casual acquaintances were for, after all. He lowered the book to check his watch. Still a couple more minutes.

* * *

Mél sat cross-legged under the desk in her office, meditating before a painted cardboard-and-plastic shrine depicting Glob’s helmet. She’d misplaced her phone for a couple hours earlier in the day, and the relief when it had finally showed up must have put her in a spiritual mood. She couldn’t fully enter a decent meditative groove, however, before she was rudely brought back to full awareness of material reality by a knock on her door.

She hit her head on the underside of the desk as she stood up. “Door’s unlocked,” she called out. “Come on in.”

The door creaked slightly, but whoever was on the other side didn’t come in; instead, they slipped a sheet of paper under the door.

Vaulting over her desk with athletic grace, Mél snatched up the note and read it over. “Vesper, I know this is you,” she said. “Only you could have an idea this morbid.”

A brief pause and some audible scribbling, and then another note was slid under the door.

Mél didn’t even bother picking this one up. “I mean — okay, I really shouldn’t say this, but you’re  _ technically _ right. What’s this about?”

The next sheet of paper was completely blank.

“I shouldn’t have bothered asking, I see that now. I trust you’re not going to  _ act _ on this, right? I mean, it’s not your style to hold grievances, let alone… you know… this.”

One final note, this time with only two words, in bold, inked calligraphy that must have been prepared in advance.

“You spelled my name wrong, but — oh, no. Pete’s gotta be involved somehow. That’s the only way I could be the target of this. Don’t bother answering, I know you won’t. I’ll just have to have some words with him on my own. Was that what this was about? You were warning me?”

Silence. The person on the other side of the door was gone.

Mél sighed, picking up the paper off the ground and placing it in a recycling bin in the corner of her office. She made a mental note to shred it later, and then burn the scraps. If half of what she’d gathered from that bizarre interaction was true (and if she was being honest, she doubted that), well, she knew what she’d be praying for tonight.

* * *

Dirt Beer Guy, the best bartender in the Candy Kingdom whose head was a mug of soil, was manning the tin can he used as a drive-thru speaker setup. “This is soda soda,” he said. “We make soda. How can I help you, assuming that the thing that’ll help you is me giving you soda in exchange for currency?”

A barely audible voice from the other end.

“Hey, wait, that you Jake? Man, it’s been too long.”

Tinny frustration came through in response.

“Whoops, sorry about that, then. I didn’t catch your order the first time, could you repeat it?”

A brief paused, followed by slower, barely more comprehensible speech.

DBG jotted something down on a notepad. “Got it. That’ll be twelve seventy-five.”

Some  _ very _ loud muffled frustration followed that one.

“Yeah, yeah, and I’m a starving bartender. I’ve got a business to run, man, and there’s no family-of-friends discount.”

He set down the can and began preparing the order. Haggling? At this hour? He had no interest in participating. This was why he didn’t like artists.

* * *

General relativity states that there is no difference between an object in freefall and one drifting through space with no change in momentum. The force of gravity acting on something is no different from the phantom projecting caused by acceleration, so if you were in a room that was falling at exactly the rate it wanted to, you’d effectively be weightless. The universe is full of paradoxes like this, where two different things are exactly the same — C sharp and D flat, space and time, ham and Canadian bacon. Jugland sunsets, the coward’s sunset where the sun hides behind the Sienna ridge, are merely the passing of the shadow of a mountain over Jugland Mesa. They are no less beautiful for it; if anything, it’s more.

Penhaligon Arthur Jugland was not contemplating these thoughts as he sat in the castle’s side yard, watching the colors wash over the mesa and gradually give way to darkness. He had taken a rare opportunity to lose himself in the moment, simply admiring the view alongside his oft-gone wife and sleepy-headed daughter.

“Some view, huh?” Without warning, Robin suddenly appeared beside them, zhir stripes recolored to match the sunset. Zhir voice was genuine, but zhe had a peculiar smirk. “It’s the kinda view that painters spend years of their lives trying to capture, not that they could ever really do it justice. Or so I’m told.”

There was something in zhir casual tone which unnerved Pen. “What are you doing here, Robin?” he asked, half annoyed and half on edge, subtly shifting closer to Colla in the process.

“Penjamin!” Colla chided. “Don’t be rude. Zhe has every right to come to this specific corner of the castle grounds to watch the sunset.” She, of course, knew that Robin’s sudden appearance here was no coincidence and may have been designed specifically to get a rise out of her husband, but she also wasn’t keen on excusing his irascibility.

“Yeah,” Robin agreed, “don’t be rude, Hal.” Penny repeated this, putting emphasis on the  _ “Hal”, _ and then broke out into a laughing fit.

Pen pulled the long black locks of his toupé over his face. “Alright, I get it, fine,” he said. “Robin, what are you doing here,  _ please?” _

“Thank you,” said Robin, shifting part of zhir body into a chair and tossing zhir button-braided tail around zhir neck like a feather boa that had gotten into a horrible accident at a needlepoint workshop. Zhe was also wearing pink, star-shaped sunglasses, though as to whether they were an actual pair zhe’d managed to get zhir paws on or merely an illusion zhe created with zhir ever-increasing magical talents, only zhe could say. “But yeah, I just wanted to watch the sunset, and to remind you that you’ve got no right to tell me where I can and can’t do that in the castle.”

“Wha—?” Pen flailed his arms about wildly, nearly knocking off Robin’s stellar shades (so they were real, then). “That’s not a thing I’ve done!”

“Oh, really?” Zhe looked over at Pen and half-lowered zhir sunglasses, staring right at him with zhir bicolored eyes. “So I must have imagined all the times the castle guard kept telling me, ‘oh, no, Robin, please don’t leap out of Macy’s bedroom window and rappel a kilbillion meters down into the forest below, wah wah wah, it’s compromising security or something.’”

“Robin, that was Mél.  _ They _ didn’t want you to do that, because it’s  _ compromising security _ to broadcast a path into the castle that bypasses half our guards!”

“Oh.” Zhe pushed zhir glasses up and turned away. “Well, uh, there was the time you put your motorcycle in the stable and made everyone call it Jackson.”

“You’re still thinking of Mél.”

A beat. “But you were the one who cheated on your spouse with the Candy Kingdom’s previous ambassador, right?”

Pen sighed, then stood up, his scalp looming over Robin while his eyes were level with zhir. “I don’t know why you’re really here,” he said, trying his best to keep a level tone as he was aware of his wife’s continued presence just behind him, “but if you have nothing better to do than rattle off your grievances with one of my oldest friends, please leave.”

“Aha!” Robin resumed zhir outside form instantaneously, the moment pushing Pen backwards into his wife’s ready arms and launching zhir sunglasses skyward. “I knew you and she were friends, and I just got you to admit it.”

Pen rolled his eyes, leaning back into Colla’s embrace. “That’s not exactly privileged information, Robin. We knew each other since childhood. Besides we’re not even particularly close these days. Do you have a point or not?”

Zhe tapped the tip of zhir horn. “Of course I do, and I also have a reason for being here. I just hope you’re not too mad at my confusion. I mean, you  _ do _ act like you’re the one in charge of protecting the duchy, after all.”

A chill suddenly came over Pen — a vestige of shadow, perhaps, or an omen of the oncoming night. He slid out of his wife’s arms and stood up, much more slowly and shaky in the knees. “What do you mean?” he asked, and immediately he knew that was the wrong thing to say.  _ Anything _ would have been the wrong thing to say. He should have ignored zhir, went back to spending a nice evening with his family. But no, he wanted to hear what Robin had to say.

Zhe stretched a paw out and turned it into a net to catch the shades on their descent. “Well, I hope I’m not just seeing things,” zhe equivocated unconvincingly as zhe reeled them in. “I mean, between consistently involving yourself with how the guard conducts their affairs and your most recent attempt to cajole our poor contracted accountant into keeping things all mum-like, I figured that was all just you being super selfless in dedicating oh so much of your time and energy to making sure we were all held to your own personal standard of security.”

Colla nervously tugged on the collar of her green sweater dress and began to stand herself. “This seems really personal, so as much as I’d love to stick up for my husband, I have to, uh, go.” But Penny shook her head and tapped the ground next to her eagerly, clearly interested in seeing where this grown-up drama was going. Colla sighed and sat down next to her daughter. She wouldn’t admit it, but she found this just as entertaining as Penny did.

Pen, meanwhile, was standing firm as ever. His legs now planted, their shaking had been relocated to his trembling arms. “What are you implying?” he asked. “That wanting to do my best for my country is wrong, somehow? Everything I do, I do because I genuinely believe that it’s in the best interest of — of us all. We are small and fragile and situated at the edge of empires, and our only option is to play to our strengths and keep our cards close to our chest.”

Robin tutted. “Haven’t you ever played full-contact poker? If you keep your cards close to your chest, you’re gonna cut yourself to ribbons.”

“No!  _ Regular _ poker, without the bladed edges!”

“Oh, you were making a metaphor.” Zhe paused to decode it, taking the moment to re-don the star sunglasses. “You’ve certainly been doing the closeness thing,” zhe said eventually. “Taking up all the responsibility of overseeing contracts with foreign powers, for example.”

“Because I’m better at that stuff than Dad is,” huffed Pen. “You know it’s true. I mean, I love the guy, but he wouldn’t know assertiveness if it strutted up to him and demanded he give it a favorable extension on its fixed-term tentative land rights contract.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Robin waved dismissively. “That’s foreign policy. But you do that,  _ and _ civil defense,  _ and _ security,  _ and _ financials. You really want to consolidate that power, get it all coming from one place. Keep the machine running smoothly, under the watchful eye of your competency. Kinda like what—”

“Don’t say it,” he snapped, true venom in his voice. Instinctively, his hand went toward where his hip be at, where his lance lay half-concealed under his own brown sweater. “I know exactly what you’re about to say, and don’t you  _ dare _ compare me to—”

“—Princess Bubblegum,” zhe finished. “You know what the difference between you and her is?”

“She’s prettier!” Penny shouted helpfully.

Robin was taken aback by this. “No, Pen’s very pretty.”

Penny tilted her head in concentration, ignorant to the festering fury in her father’s face as he was facing the wrong way. “Is it that she’s a better fighter?”

“I  _ did _ accomplish a lot more when the castle was attacked than he did,” Robin mused.

At this, Pen actually put his hand on his lance, no longer making an effort to hide it. “How  _ dare _ you?” he said. “I had to fight my own  _ sister! _ It was heartbreaking and scarring. And what were you doing, anyway? Getting your technicolor butt kicked a middle-aged dachshund who ultimately got taken down by a chandelier?”

Robin smirked. “The difference between you and Princess Bubblegum is that Princess Bubblegum can handle an insult.”

Penhaligon Jugland was not an idiot. He knew what he should have done just then. He should have stopped for just a moment, breathed, and calmed himself down. He should have ignored Robin and went back to spending a nice eve with his wife and daughter, just as he should have when Robin first arrived. This was not retrospective: He knew all of this in the moment, even as he made the exact wrong decision. Robin had given him an opportunity to either prove zhir right or prove zhir wrong, and zhe’d practically told him zhe was doing that with a level of subtlety so foreign to zhir that zhe must have practiced it. The fact that zhe thought it might work anyway was perhaps the biggest insult zhe’d given that day.

That was the problem, though. Zhe’d insulted him, so despite all the cunning he prided himself on, he let that very same pride steer his course. Drawing his lance, he held it up over his head like a  _ very _ pale imitation of a rainicorn’s horn, and took a small measure of satisfaction in seeing Robin’s coiled, snakelike form flex away from it. “I don’t have to take this from the likes of you,” he hissed. “You’re a gadfly with no purpose, riding in the eddies of your own natural abilities into a cesspool of indolence. You have no concept of how much of myself I’ve given to Jugland, and if you think I’m going to let you treat all of it like so much garbage, you are very much mistaken.”

After taking a moment to regain zhir composure, Robin swallowed and met his gaze, not bothering to remove zhir shades this time. “Actions speak louder than words. Are you challenging me?”

“Don’t!” Colla cried out, making him pivot his body around to face his wife. She had hoisted Penny up and slung her over her shoulder like a sack of peanuts. “Or do,” Colla continued nonchalantly. “It’s your life. I oughtn’t to tell you what to do with it.”

“My life?” he asked. “Starling, are you telling me that you think I’d  _ die? _ First of all, there’s no reality in which I challenge a permanent houseguest to mortal combat—”

“Of course not,” Robin butted in. “That would hurt your image.”

“—but more importantly,” he went on as if Robin hadn’t interrupted, “both you and Robin are seriously underestimating my abilities, I feel like. I’m tougher than you’re giving me credit. Not that I’m going to fight anyone,” he added hastily. “That would be unbecoming. Plus Mél would kill me — I mean,  _ not _ kill me.”

“Wow, Pen,” said Robin, making an obvious effort to sound genuinely impressed. “I didn’t think you had that kind of graciousness in you to accept the futility of such a fight. Especially not after your absolute, tantrum-like meltdown at the accountant’s office the other day. That shows real growth.”

He clutched at his head. “Robin, please stop it. This is ridiculous. And entrapment. Are any of you Cash Daniels in an incredibly effective disguise? You have to tell me if you’re a private investigator.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” said Robin. “Not that I’d tell you if I did. I’m sure that irks you, knowing that there’s something you don’t know. You know?”

He lowered his lance to the ground. “Robin, I’m not going to fight you.”

“Do it, daddy!” shouted Penny, clapping her hands excitedly. “That sounds cool!”

A smile spread over his face. “Well, I can’t say no to my little girl.” He whirled around, lance at the ready once more. “Robin V, by the ancient code that somehow hasn’t been struck down, I challenge you to honorable combat.”

Suddenly, Vesper was just…  _ there, _ a hefty tome bound in studded leather in their arms, with red lettering labeling it as  _ The Impractical Guide to Dares, Duels, and Other Dangerous Tomfoolery. _ “Then it’s decided,” they proclaimed, their voice booming. “Let the worst loser weep!”

* * *

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Pen, suddenly less sure. “We’re starting now? As in  _ right _ now? I thought we’d at least have a change of—”

A fist shot forward and clocked Pen across the face before retracting back into Robin’s jowls. His vision swam, not helped by his fake hair now falling across his face. When he managed to shove it out of the way, Robin’s horn was glowing white; he barely managed to raise his arms in an X in front of his face before he was hit with a beam of color so wide Vesper had to do the limbo to avoid getting caught in the blast. The force hit him like a mild tap, but the psychosomatic nocebo of his own anticipation of the blow made him fall over backward.

“Daddy!” Penny cried, apparently just now realizing that her father taking part in a duel would entail dueling of some variety. She reached out to try to help him up, but Colla held her back and began to lead her away.

“It’s no use,” Colla said. “He has to do this on his own. This is the law of nature.”

Pen felt a surge of some unidentified emotion — probably anger — give him the energy to propel himself to his feet, his wig lopsided but out of his face now, his lance now held firmly like a waiting spike. In front of him, Robin was… reading a book? Zhir sunglasses had been pushed up zhir face, and it looked like zhe was totally engrossed in a copy of  _ A Collector’s Guide to Coinage, Vol. 47. _ Still, given zhir lack of pupils, Pen couldn’t say for sure where zhe was  _ actually _ looking, so he didn’t immediately take advantage of this apparent distraction.

Instead he started to slowly pace around her, holding the lance outstretched in what was very obviously the wrong way to hold a lance. Robin slowly rotated zhir head around as he circled, confirming that zhe wasn’t totally out of it, but zhe kept reading.

In the heat of the moment, the only thing Pen could think was that he oughtn’t give Robin enough room to take full advantage of zhir stretchiness, so he began to back away toward the castle’s front door. When zhe didn’t immediately follow, he lunged forward with the knife, feinting toward zhir book. Zhe yanked the volume out of the way and stretched a leg out in an attempt to yoink the lance out of the air, an attempt which would have worked had Pen not been ready to immediately jump back; but that had taken enough mass that zhe’d shrunk down to about thrice zhir indoor form’s size, and zhe was now lumbering toward him with a single enormous overmuscled arm. So that was a success of sorts.

“Hey! Be careful with that,” Robin shouted, stretching one eye backward to keep reading the book. “If you hurt Macy’s book, I’m gonna you pay for it more than I’m about to anyway.”

“Why do you—” Pen raised his lance and braced it with his other arm attempting to block a sudden blow from Macy’s giant arm. He felt the impact of the blow reverberate through his arms, nearly making him lose his footing again, but he managed to turn that into momentum for a renewed sprint toward the door. He didn’t resume speaking until he’d shoved it open (to the surprise of the half-dozing doornut) and dove into the foyer, hot on the heels of a blast of magic at his feet. “Why do you have Macy’s book?” he asked as he spun back around to face zhir, self-consciously lowering and widening his stance and hoping nobody knew enough about fighting to observe how sloppy it really was. It’d been far too long since he’d had a good spar, especially since things were so weird with Mél. All on his account, of course.

“Because we’re super close and share everything,” Robin replied as zhe shrunk down further to fit through the door. Pen took that moment to make an actual lunge. Robin stretched out of the way, but a bit too slowly, and the green tip of his lance glanced off zhir blue right eye with an eerily clear  _ ting. _ Robin twitched in pain, contracting into zhir indoor form and holding zhir eye with zhir paw as if zhe were afraid it might slip out of zhir skull. The pink star shades clattered to the ground next to zhir. “On a related note, you’d better hope those glasses aren’t broken, either. Macy was saving those for a special occasion, you reckless idiot.”

_ But you were the one who took them and wore them when you knew you were going to do this, _ Pen thought. He didn’t say it; Robin would not be easier to fight if he kept zhir angry. Zhe wasn’t him. He did think he had a way to keep the upper hand (or forepaw, in this case). He started striding backward, glancing back to make sure he didn’t pin himself against a wall or trip over a pile of empty pudding cups or something like that. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, letting a bit of a patronizing edge slip into his voice (he still wanted Robin a  _ little _ angry). “Why do you have Macy’s book  _ now?” _

Robin sprouted two extra legs so zhe could run after Pen on all fours while still keeping one eye on the book, flipping through pages. “I just think coins are intellectually interesting,” zhe said. “They’re little pieces of metal that we really only use as placeholders for commercial value, yet they’re also the most highly concentrated pieces of nationalist iconography that the average person interacts with on a regular basis. The stuff we put on them is fascinating and really says a lot about the nature of intelligent life, or at least about the priorities of civilization. Macy mostly enjoys this stuff as a starting point for cool historical anecdotes, and also looking at the pretty pictures, but I’ve always been more fascinated by the invisible politics behind who is deemed praiseworthy enough to be immortalized on coinage — especially the collector’s edition stuff that this series documents.”

Pen, who had led Macy into a hallway, but didn’t really have a plan on where to go from there, stopped short. “Hey, wait,” he said, “that stuff is exactly my pudding. Are you saying we could have been rapping about this the whole time? That sound—” He was blasted in the face by another of Robin’s kinetic rainbows, sending him sailing several meters down the hall.

“Don’t interrupt,” Robin chided (choud?). Zhe pinched zhir chin with zhir page-turning paw. “Argh, I’ve lost my place. What was I saying?”

A thought occurred to Pen — an idea that might synergize with his current holding pattern and form the framework of an actual plan. “You were fascinated by the politics,” he supplied, getting up and beginning his tactical retreat in earnest, this time with a destination in mind.

“Right.” Robin turned the page, then, apparently happy with the result, swiveled zhir reading eye forward and sped up the chase. “Whoever writes this series isn’t really interested in that aspect of the trade, beyond its value as trivia related to the actual manufacture of the coins. Either that, or they just choose not to bog down the books with it. But you know, and I know, that you can’t make an arbitrary choice about who deserves a portrait that literally everybody keeps in their pockets without revealing at least some of your biases, and there are a few noteworthy trends. A lot of leaders, a lot of inventors, and a surprising number of people who qualify as both. But do you know who got the most?”

Pen noticed Robin’s horn glowing just in time to dodge zhir next bolt, twirling right into an outstretched leg and tripping. He lunged out with his lance as he fell, making Robin leap back instinctively far enough to give him the space to recover and keep running. “I dunno. Probably religious figures, country founders, or, I dunno, who else has that level — in a word — image?”

Robin smirked, slowing down just a bit as zhe held up the book so that Pen could see the page zhe had it open too. It was a two-page spread illustrating a traditional Jugland coin: the Perseus half-dollar, sporting the visage of the same hero of Jugland lore whose namesake statue once stood in a shrine beneath the city, only one emerald eye now remaining. “In a word?” zhe replied. “Heroes.”

Zhir horn glowed once more, and Pen threw himself face-first into a wall to avoid another blast, but this one was different. The saturation drained from zhir fur, swirling up zhir horn like a spiral of cake frosting before flowing lazily up to the book in zhir paw. It gathered on the open page, the image glowed, and then something very quickly emerged from it. A hand reached out, holding a lance much like Pen’s but larger and better maintained. A foot stepped forward, armored cleats clinking loudly on the marble floor. Perseus Stachio was, impossibly, standing here before him, his body cast from coinage-grade bronze aside from the striking green of his eyes and the tip of his lance.

Also, because he was created from a picture of a half-dollar coin, he came up to about Robin’s knee.

“Hark, villain!” he cried out in a voice that was somehow both squeaky and booming. “I have arrived to defend the Jugland Mesa from hey why is everything so big?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Robin. “What matters is you’re a magical construct made by a friend of mine’s spell and you’re gonna help me kick that other guy’s butt.”

He paused to consider this. “Why, though?”

“I dunno. Why are you askin’, anyway? You’re a construct, you don’t got prerogatives. At least, you  _ shouldn’t.” _

“I… what?” He raised the hand not holding his lance up to his face, flexing his gauntleted fingers slowly. Gingerly, he lifted off the armored glove with two fingers of his other hand, revealing no appendage beneath. “Gob’s kneepads. I have become a phantasm. Is this the end of my cruel existence, or merely the beginning of a pathetic parody? Am I even real?”

“Ah, geez, I hope not.” Robin rubbed the back of zhir neck in discomfort, then tapped the glove back into place and gestured toward the slowly retreating Pen with zhir horn. “Maybe kicking that guy’s butt will help you stave off your ontological crisis?”

“‘Tis worth a shot.” He began dashing remarkably fast, carrying the lance with one hand at the butt and the other about a third of the way up — a grip style Pen had only ever seen one other person use. Pen held his own lance how his instructor had taught him long ago, with his hands further up and closer to the balance point, and hoped his superior size would outweigh his vastly inferior skill.

Turned out they don’t make statues out of just anybody. The tiny green warrior jumped onto Pen’s lance, ran up it like an experienced gymnast gearing up for a ten-point twirling leap, then stabbed forward with his own weapon with incredible force. The impact against his forehead was so strong and sharp that Pen felt like his brain had fractured. He yowled and stumbled backwards, flailing his arms and dropping his lance; he managed to knock Perseus into a nearby tapestry purely by chance.

Robin ran over to where Persues had impacted. “No, no, no!” zhe cried. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

“I believe I am, my liege,” replied the holographic knight, bracing himself against his lance like a walking stick. “Your rival is truly a formidable giant.”

“No, not you. You’re not real, remember?” Zhe stroked zhir paw over the fabric of the tapestry, which depicted a cubist rendering of a snow dragon. Apparently it had once terrorized the Sienna Ridge a century and a half ago, which was about as far as Galé had gotten in his extensive lecture on the topic before Robin had started tuning him out. “If this art gets all ding dang donked up, Hal’s gonna kill me for  _ realsies. _ No takebacks or anything.”

“The most serious kind of killing,” Perseus responded gravely. “You are wise to be precautious.”

“I get that a lot,” Robin lied. “Now, go chase down Hal while I hang this back up.”

“Are you perchance going to tell me  _ why _ I’m harassing this person?”

“No.”

“‘Twas worth a shot.”

Once Perseus was successfully sicced on Pen once again and the two went scampering down the hall, Robin stretched zhir paws up to hang up the tapestry, then took a step back and examined it. This would do, zhe thought. Zhe smirked, and zhir horn began to glow once more.

Pen  _ saw _ Robin pause back there as he glanced back in the middle of running for dear life, but he didn’t have the luxury of processing that before he had to parry an ankle-focused lance strike from the mini-Perseus. Now that the initial surprise of Robin’s conjuration trick had worn off, he had the presence of mind to deflect a blow from an opponent about one tenth his size, but he didn’t want to test his luck. He wasted no time in resuming his defensive dash down the hallway.

“We don’t have to fight!” he said to the green figure, hoping desperately that that was true. “Your whole thing is that you fought to protect Jugland, right? Listen, I do that too. Heck, I’m part of the royal family! Your Duchess, Penrose, was my great—”

“Bah!” shouted Perseus. “Penrose is a coward with a paper-maché heart who sold Jugland to the highest bidder, and yet apparently her descendents honor me as a hero? Hypocrite, I shall carve out thy tongue with a tuning-fork and use thy shell as a millstone!”

“Oh.” All things considered, that wasn’t the coldest reception one of Pen’s diplomatic offers had received, but it was certainly buried somewhere under the slag of ideal. “Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?”

He rapped one of his gloves against his empty helmet, producing no sound. “I have no thought, knave.”

“Ooh, sorry. Sore subject?”

“Yea.” And then he stabbed him in the foot.

With a yowl, Pen reflexively kicked Perseus back down the hallway and began to scramble the rest of the way toward his destination. The pain that shot through his stabbéd leg with every other step gave him quite the limping gait, but he knew better than to slow down. Just ten more yards… five more… three… In his desperation, time seemed to slow down, which he very much did not appreciate. It was like the door was dedicated to remaining out of reach for as long as possible.

Then he heard a loud, scratchy roar from behind him, and he was suddenly glad time had slowed down. He’d have a few more seconds to savor the last moments of his life.

He fought his freezing instinct and the pain in his leg to turn around and saw the source of the roar — a great white-and-yellow dragon made of fabric and thread, weird sac thingies billowing in the wind like twin flags. Its long, snakelike body didn’t corkscrew through the air like real dragons do, but instead seemed to stutter from position to position, as if it were running on a low framerate; all of its extremities flapped with each jump, carrying some invisible momentum. Even its teeth looked flaccid and felt, yet somehow they only seemed more dangerous for it.

He jabbed forward with his lance, and as soon as the dragon reached it, the sharp point tore straight through its cheek and ripped a hole to the other side. With an animalistic screech, it turned around and raced back down the hallway, until there was a flash of light, followed by a terrified Robin standing in front of a very torn-up tapestry.

Perseus crossed his arms. “I could have done that. This proves nothing.”

Before the knight could charge toward him again, Pen slammed open the doors behind him in his best impression of a blind panic (the panic was genuine, of course; he just wanted to appear slightly more directionless than he actually was). He quickly dove behind a chair, then took a moment to pull his lance in alongside him. Then he let out a silent squeal as his poor crouch posture put unnecessary weight on his damaged foot.

“Show yourself, villain!” shouted Perseus as he followed the marquess into the room. “Bare thy neck before me, that I might… hold, demon. I know this place.”

Robin strolled in behind him, looking about aimlessly with the coin book in one hand. The room zhe’d just entered just so happened to be the castle chapel, its sprawling triptych and rows of pews cast in shadow by as the incandescent lighting around the rim was turned off — this denomination evidently did not have Replacethiswithabettername services. “I mean, I would really hope that you do,” zhe said. “This is one of the oldest places in the place. It’d be pretty out there if you didn’t recognize it.” Zhe closed zhir eyes, and a ball of light rose up from zhir horn and illuminated the room. “New décor, though.”

Perseus looked up at the triptych until his empty helmet fell off his vacuous neck. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.” Robin began flipping through the book once more. “I’ve never really been a fan of abstract art. You see, there’s no  _ character _ in—”

Pen chose that moment to strike, spearing Robin’s paw with his lance, forcing zhir to drop the book and bringing the total appendage trade between them to an even split. Robin recoiled, as much front he sickening crack as from the pain; those bones would be hard to find a replacement for. He reached out and yoinked the book, then quickly rolled across the aisle and leapt onto the opposite pew before Robin’s reflexive stretchy grasping tentacles could ensnare him.

“I’ve got you!” he shouted, keeping an eye on Perseus as he tried and failed to find his own head. “You’ve lost track of the bigger picture and let me lead you into a trap. A tendency which might also inform why you seem to struggle with understanding the appeal of the metageometric principles which underlie the Gardenian shapism of ‘Circumscription Scenes’.”

Retracting zhir arms, Robin twisted zhir mouth into a question mark. “In what way am I trapped?”

“Well, you don’t have this book anymore, for one.” Pen opened the book to about where he thought Robin had been before his attack, a page depicting an alternate design of the Ice Kingdom’s cool cat quarter. Holding the page out for Robin to see, he taunted, “Good luck summoning more pathetic warriors now.”

“Oh, no, what ever shall I do?” Robin wailed, turning one of zhir paws into a fan and, well, fanning zhirself. “There’s simply no way I can possibly cast a spell further than the tip of my oh wait.” Zhe pointed zhir horn at the book and let out a beam of light.

Pen, for once, smirked.

Vesper suddenly appeared between the two of them, one hand outstretched, a ball of light fading into it. “No, Robin,” they chided (chid?). “You will not release a wild animal into this sacred place. Do you have any idea how many gods that would displease? Statistically speaking, probably at least one, and that’s one too many.”

“Oh, so it’s—” Robin stopped speaking as Perseus blindly stumbled into zhir shin. Zhe stretched out zhir hind paw to pick up his helmet and slap it onto his head backwards. “Oh, so it’s bad juju?” zhe began again. “Everything is, with you. You collect superstitions like I would collect ukuleles if I didn’t already have the world’s best ukulele.”

“You have an ordinary ukulele.”

“And you have an extraordinary credulity. You once freaked out and climbed out of a room through the skylight because you realized there were seven people in it.”

“That’s irrelevant,” they said hastily. “But, uh, there aren’t seven people here  _ now, _ are there?”

“There will be when I’m through with Pen.” Zhe lit up zhir horn and fired off another magic blast. Vesper tried to catch it again, but this one had some extra oomph behind it. Robin was putting so much of zhir color into it that zhir stripes were starting to look grey. Even Perseus, several meters away, was starting to pixellate and join into the energetic stream emanating from Robin’s horn into Vesper’s braced palms. They braced themselves, then with one last shout, redirected it the only direction they could think to — up.

For a moment, nothing happened. Vesper relaxed their arms, Robin collapsed to the floor, and the bottom half of Perseus sat down bow-legged. Pen sighed with relief, then looked up, and realized that something had indeed happened.

The triptych rippled, a pulse of nigh-indecipherable movement passing from one corner to the other, echoing like in a crystal-clear pond. Then it began to shift a bit more. The ribbons of color and discordant shapes of the composition usually seemed to take up three-dimensional space, but now suddenly they did, and the universe refused to acknowledge it. Everyone could feel the air shift, pushed away by the sudden emergence of something which was never designed to exist. There was something powerful in the air, like an electric current running backwards. Time sped up as gravity failed, forming a vortex centered on the bands of fluctuating color as they snaked around the limp, greyed-out body of Robin. Pen felt his bottom half rise up, carried by some invisible force, and was barely able to grab onto the pew with a single arm. He was being pulled apart and put back together a million times a second, and each time, new shards of the impossible painted universe flew through him. He saw infinite landscapes rendered in polygons and spheres, refracting sideways beyond the boundaries of perception until the space between thought was filled in by concept. His hand, still trapped in material reality, was not his own but an extension of the prison his mind had been held in for all his life, tethering him to thoughtless form and flawed being. All he had to do was let—

* * *

The very next sensation Pen experienced was the pungent aroma of smelling salts. He was sitting in a three-dimensional room, on a surface which imposed a force on his body when he came in contact with it, and he was immersed in another force pulling him in a constant direction. It was good to be back.

This room was specifically a white, harshly-lit room in the Jugland general hospital. When he went to move, he realized he was lying on a bed, his foot in a cast and elevated. On a bed next to his, he could see Robin, sound asleep, with one of zhir forepaws similarly bandaged. Standing between them was Macy in a white lab coat, holding a container of smelling salts.

“Hey!” cried a voice from the doorway, as an acorn dressed identically to Macy walked into the room, an angry look on their face. “I told you to make like an egg and scram, kid!”

Macy huffed. “I’m not a ki—” The doctor yanked Macy by the coat collar and tossed her out of the room before slamming the door closed.

Pen looked up at the doctor who was now scowling over him. “Give it to me straight, doc,” he insisted. “What’s the damage?”

“To you? Minimal.” They took out a sword and cut the straps elevating Pen’s leg, sending it crashing to the hospital bed with another hammer-jolt of pain. “The extraction team led by your, uh, younger sister was able to recover you from the chaos dimension Robin had accidentally created before any lasting ontological harm could be done. She apparently had some experience dealing with extradimensional rifts being opened in the castle on your account, or so she tells me.”

With a grimace, Pen nodded as he sat up. “She probably exaggerated the story a lot, but yeah. Though the last time was less stabby, and more post-ironic.”

“Yes, I’d gathered.” They scribbled something down on a clipboard they’d picked up from a table near him. Pen was out of touch with a number of things, including telling what people were writing from how the end of the pen moved, but he was pretty sure that what the doctor had just jotted down was a derogatory comment of some kind about Pen’s personal responsibility — which, all things considered, he couldn’t very well refute if so. “You should be free to go soon, but don’t do anything too exciting. I’ll be assigning a mutual friend of yours to ensure  _ both of you _ refrain from this idiocy in the future.”

“Who?” Pen asked. “Macy?”

The doctor shook their head. “Not family, no. I’ve never known family to  _ mitigate _ recklessness, so I recruited someone more level-headed insteaded.”

A beat.

“That’s your cue,” they called.

The door flew open again, and this time it was Captain Amélie Faucher who strode into the room, wearing a black leather lab coat over a periodic table t-shirt with ripped-up khakis. Until today, Pen had never had cause to wonder what a punk pharmacist would look like, but now he knew.

When Pen did not assume the appropriate amount of admonished contrition immediately, Mél shot him a withering glare. “I’d call this unbelievable if it weren’t so predictable,” she said. “I should have realized this was the real reason Vesper was asking about antiquated dueling laws. I suppose I should thank you for that, too, since now that this has been brought to the attention of the entire glob-forsaken Candy Kingdom, we can finally get that overruled.”

Pen shriveled up like a shrub in drought. “Well, that’s good,” he managed.

“It’s being overruled because of a nationwide decree by Princess Bubblegum, which Ambassador Corn is being charged with overseeing the implementation and enforcement of.”

“Well, that’s bad.”

“I’ll leave the room,” said the doctor, who had been prodding Robin’s floppy limbs with a metal stick for presumably medical reasons. “I can see this discussion doesn’t concern me.”

Mél watched the doctor as he left the room, then leaned forward close to Pen’s face. “You’re surefire right it’s bad,” they hissed. “The one thing we agree on is that the Duchy needs to be more self-sufficient politically, and yet between this and the Icy University deal, you’ve been doing a lot that seems counterproductive to that premise. Now the candy military, via Candice Corn, is going to have a direct line to all our defense operations. What am I supposed to do about that, huh?”

Pen considered this. “Comply fully,” he suggested. “Answer all of Candice’s questions and implement all of her orders, so she doesn’t have an excuse to bypass you and talk to Pete. He’s too—”

“I know,” Mél snapped. “This isn’t my first day on the job. It was a rhetorical question.” They stood back, regarding him as one might regard a rebellious teen who’d gotten mangled in a horrible skateboarding accident. “Just don’t do this again,” she said, her tone softer. “Or I’ll put you under house arrest.” Not  _ much _ softer.

“Noted,” said Pen. He let out a slight chuckle, then immediately regretted it — not because it hurt to laugh, but because he might have woken Robin, and that was not a conversation he wanted to have now. Or ever.

Seeing Pen’s eyes drift to the snoring rainicorn-dog, Mél followed suit. “I’m serious,” she said. “The both of you need to tone this down. No more honor duels or ridiculously-escalating prank wars. If you need to work through your bizarre rivalry, work out your feelings like adults, by blackmailing each other, sabotaging each other’s political designs, and stealing each other’s friends and personal effects. We can’t afford to keep repairing the castle. Well, we can, but now that our financials are publicly available, it’s not great for optics.”

“Oh, right.” Pen sat up again. “What happened with the chapel?”

* * *

“It got trashed a bit by a magical accident,” said the Duke by way of explanation, “but we’ve cleared out the broken pews and ensured the structural integrity of the pipe organ. The only remnant is the top half of a semi-living armor suit we couldn’t seem to find.”

“And the triptych,” noted Jermaine the Dog, decked out in an artist’s smock and beret. He pointed with a paintbrush to the triptych that was now laying on the floor in front of the pulpit of the mangled chapel. The canvas was completely empty as the day it’d been assembled, except (for some reason) for the lingering signature of Cilantro.

The Duke nodded. “Hence the paycheck.”

Jermaine’s agent, an enormous blue-skinned demon named Bryce, pushed up his pince-nez. “Which has been processed and went through. Religious work isn’t my client’s usual speciality, such as it were, but we’re rather trying to take the ‘starving’  _ out _ of ‘starving artist’, so we’re more than happy to accept.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jermaine, “especially if it gives me a chance to show that stuck-up snob Cilantro that I can paint circles around his circles.”

“Please don’t bring any rivalry into this,” the Duke pled. “Rivalry is how this mess got started.”

“My client will keep that under advisement,” said Bryce. “Come now, let’s leave him alone to think, and you can give me a tour of the facilities. I hear you have a waterslide.”

“No,” said the Duke as the two turned to walk out of the chapel. “This is a castle. I have no idea where you heard that rumor.”

Once the two were gone, Jermaine closed his eyes and sat down. He cleared his mind, concentrating on his breathing to crowd out material thoughts, like the meditation holograms had taught him. “Alright,” he said, his voice echoing in his own head, becoming almost visible in the blackness behind his eyelids. “Inspiration for the divine. There ought to be a better name for that. How should I approach this?”

“Do something literal,” suggested a voice he didn’t recognize. He turned around, not realizing at first that he hadn’t bothered to open his eyes. Robin was standing there, in his mindscape, next to zhir great-aunt and his niece, Charlie. “The previous triptych was too thinky.”

Jermaine had never had these two in particular invade his mindscape, but it had been permeated many times in general, so he rolled with it. “I don’t do literal,” he said. “Also, no ‘hello’? Geez, you’d think that you could count on those pleasantries with family. Especially you, Charlie. You haven’t called me once since you got put in a coma. That’s downright inconsiderate.”

Charlie, who had evidently been distracted by something, shook herself to attention. “Sorry about that,” she said, blushing. “I’m not great at people things. Hey, uncle. How are things?”

His belly rumbled. “Business could be better.”

“I can relate to that. You’ve got Robin to thank for this talk happening, actually. Ever since zhe joined up with that magic club, zhe’s gained access to even more new spells, and all that practice is letting zhir expand the scope of zhir innate abilities, too.”

“You joined a magic club?” Jermaine made a gesticulation of surprise with his paintbrush, which he was also surprised he was still holding in this black void of a mindscape, though he wasn’t sure why either of those things surprised him. “I’m always the last to hear about these things.”

“Then stop being a weird art recluse who lives out in the wasteland,” suggested Robin.

“No.”

Charlie laughed. “You’re a real treat, uncle,” she said. “I’ll tell you what: I might just be able to give you inspiration for this piece, in exchange for your company.”

“What sort of inspiration?” Jermaine pointed in the direction he figured the tripartite canvas would have been, and as he thought of it, it appeared. “I accepted this job, but I’m mainly an abstract landscape painter, and you’re an arcanist’s out-of-body experience. How do you suppose you can inspire me to paint a Globular religious triptych?”

“Oh, that’s easy. You’ve been to Mars, right?”

“Yeah.” As he said that, his memory of the red planet, with its massive domed paradise cities and booming tourism industry, materialized from the blank void.

Suddenly there was a crack of lightning; the dome shattered, and a green fire swept through the silver-paved streets, spiraling out from a hole in reality above the largest dome, right overhead. It was all Jermaine could do to dance around the rising rubble, which seemed to miss Charlie and Robin entirely.

“What’s happening?” asked Robin, clutching zhir tail as the buttons braided into it tore themselves off and sailed through the escaping air. “What is this?”

“A nightmare I’ve had many times before,” answered Charlie, eyes closed against the wind. “A prophecy of the end of Mars, as foretold in the gospel of Glob. There’s your divine inspiration.”

_ Hoot. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the next chapter will end on a less ominous note.
> 
> This is one of those chapters that's pure self-indulgence, to be honest. I'm just going back through stuff I established long ago and have barely touched, creating a space to play around with it, and just… doing that. That accountant character? I had them in mind from the time I mentioned them in a throwaway line way back in the early first season, and I decided to throw them in here just because. Shipteasing Simon & Abracadaniel, showcasing the force of nature that is Colla Jugland, giving Vesper a major role for a second chapter in a row, dropping more stuff about Jugland's history — I'm just writing the stuff I love to write.
> 
> Which isn't to say this chapter came easy. It was slow going for a while as I built up to the duel, in part because I wasn't comfortable starting to write it until I had an idea of how the whole thing would play out (a problem which also still plagues the writing of the next chapter, as I'll probably discuss there). This made it all the worse when I had a tech whoopsie I don't want to discuss in the middle of writing. Luckily, once I realized what I could do with Perseus in this chapter (and it's no secret that I've had Perseus in mind for a long time, he gets name-dropped in the second-ever chapter), the rest of the writing became way easier.
> 
> Unlike the last chapter, this one did have a slight change of plans as I was writing, but one that doesn't really affect the chapter itself — rather, it'll have a knock-on effect going forward. Essentially, I realized that this chapter (which I'd actually first conceived of as an excuse to introduce Jermaine, something I ended up doing in the first season anyway) would have a bit more weight if I got Jermaine to stay in the cast. It'll become clear later, but basically I'm gonna have him stick around while he's working on the triptych, so that he and Bryce can serve minor social roles in the household dynamic. I also have several plans for the future that I can more obviously seed if he's around (if this chapter's contribution to ominous ending bingo didn't give that away).
> 
> As for that ending: Look, I know. I'm just about critical mass for foreshadowing. Look forward to a few less ominous chapters for a bit, followed by stuff that actually pays off more past stuff than it sets up for the future. In particular, I've been hinting towards Marceline's reintroduction in the tags, and when I do that in one of the upcoming chapters, I'll have some pretty interesting stuff to discuss in those author's notes.
> 
> Once again, the discussion prompt is: What would you like to see a bonus story about, concerning this universe? I have half an idea for one relating to Jermaine, but I'd love to hear your suggestions. Adventure Time has a wide, complicated world, and as evinced by the scope of this fanfic, I find basically all of it interesting.
> 
> Lastly, the preview (bonus points if you can guess who says this one):  
> “Though innocent was your plan to make some bucks, the corrupting influence of the capitalist machine we toil under… sucks!”


End file.
